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The  Underground  Passage  between  old  Province  Court 
and  Harvard  Place, 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 


Th 


HE  Special  Large  Paper  Edition  of 

Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

is  limited  to  one  hundred  and  fifty  copies. 
This  is  Number 7<dT 


The  Old  South  Church. 


Rambles 
Around  Old  Boston 


By 

Edwin  M.  Bacon 


With  Drawings  by  Lester  G.  Hornby 


non-keferT 


SWVAD  ♦  Q3S 


Boston 

Little,  Brown,  and  Company 
igi4 


Copyright,  IQ14, 
By  Little,  Brown,  and  Company. 


All  rights  reserved 
Published,  October,  1914 


HLECTROTYPED    BY    THK   UNIVERSITY    PRESS,    CAMBRIDGE 
PRBSSWORK   BY   LOUIS   E.    CROSSCUP,    BOSTON,   U.S.A. 


O'NEILL  UBRARy  v. 
BOSTON  COLLE0E 


The  I 


Contents 

Chapter  Page 

I.  The     Storied    Town     of     "Crooked     Little 

Streets"  I 

II.   Old  State  House,  Dock  Square,  Faneuil  Hall       19 

III.  Copp's  Hill  and  Old  North  (Christ)  Church 

Region 59 

IV.  The  Common  and  Round  About 87 

V.   Over  Beacon  Hill 117 

VI.   The  Water  Front 147 

VII.   Old    South,    King's    Chapel,    and    Neighbor- 
hood   169 

VIII.   Picturesque  Spots 191 

[v] 


Dorchester  Heig  ting  House  Hill. 


- 


Illustrations 

Page 
The  Underground  Passage  Between  old  Province  Court 

and  Harvard  Place Half-Title 

The  Old  South  Church Frontispiece 

The  Frigate  Constitution  at  the  Navy  Yard v 

Dorchester  Heights  from  Meeting  House  Hill vii 

The    Province    Court    Entrance    to    the    Underground 

Passage I 

Harvard  Place 9 

The  Old  State  House 23 

In  Dock  Square 31 

Faneuil  Hall  and  Quincy  Market 39 

Quaint  Buildings  of  Cornhill 49 

Copp's  Hill  Burying  Ground 63 

Christ  Church 69 

[vii] 


Illustrations 

Page 

Bunker  Hill  Monument  from  the  Belfry  of  Christ  Church  77 

The  Paul  Revere  House,  North  Square 83 

On  the  Common,  Showing  Park  Street  Church      ....  93 

On  Boston  Common  Mall  in  front  of  old  St.  Paul's  ...  103 

Across  the  Frog  Pond  to  the  old  houses  of  Beacon  Hill  .  1 1 1 
Dome  of  the  State   House,   and  site  of   the  old  John 

Hancock  House 121 

Colonial  Doorway  and  Lamp  on  Mount  Vernon  Street    .  131 

Number  74^  Pinckney  Street 137 

Old  Loft  Buildings,  Commercial  Wharf 151 

The  last  of  the  Fishing  Fleet  at  old  T  Wharf 155 

A  Bit  of  old  Long  Wharf 159 

In  the  old  "Bell-in-Hand"  Tavern 181 

King's  Chapel 187 

The  Iron  Gate  between  Province  and  Bos  worth  Streets  .  193 

A  Bit  of  old  Leverett  Street 197 

The  Quaint  Corner  where  Poplar  and  Chambers  Streets 

meet 201 

The  Boston  Stone .  207 


[  via  ] 


"The  Province    Court   Entrance  to  the    Underground 
Passage. 


I 


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<  AW 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 


THE  STORIED  TOWN  OF  "CROOKED  LITTLE 
STREETS " 

WE  were  three  —  a  visiting  Englishman,  the 
Artist,  and  Antiquary.  The  Artist  and 
Antiquary  were  the  gossiping  guides;  the  English- 
man the  guided.  The  Englishman  would  "do" 
Old  Boston  exclusively.  He  had  "done"  the 
blend  of  Old  and  New,  and  now  would  hark  back 
to  the  Old  and  review  it  in  leisurely  strolls  among 
its  landmarks.  He  had  asked  the  Artist  and  An- 
tiquary to  pilot  him  companionably,  and  they 
would  meet  his  wishes,  and  gladly,  for  the  per- 
sonal conducting  of  a  stranger  so  saturated  with 
Old  Boston  lore  as  he  appeared  to  be  could  not 
be  other  than  agreeable. 

Beyond  the  few  treasured  historic  memorials, 
the  landmarks  he  especially  would  seek  were 
many  of  them  long  ago  annihilated  in  those  re- 
peated   marches    of    progress    or   of    improvement 

'  m 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

common  to  all  growing  cities,  or  effaced  in  the 
manifold  makings-over  of  the  topography  of  the 
Old  Town,  than  which  none  other  in  Christendom 
has  undergone  more.  Still,  if  not  the  identical 
things,  the  sites  of  a  select  number  of  them  could 
be  identified  for  him,  and  their  story  or  legend 
rehearsed,  while  the  Artist's  pencil  would  repro- 
duce yet  remaining  bits  of  the  Old  jumbled  with 
the  New. 

So  we  sauntered,  we  three,  through  the  crowded 
old  streets  of  the  modern  city,  imaging  the  Old 
Town  of  the  past. 

Properly  our  initial  ramble  was  within  the  nar- 
row bounds  of  the  beginnings  of  the  Puritan  capi- 
tal, the  "metropolis  of  the  wilderness",  hanging 
on  the  harbor's  edge  of  the  little  "pear-shaped", 
be-hilled  peninsula,  for  which  the  founders,  those 
"well-educated,  polite  persons  of  good  estate", 
took  Old  Boston  in  England  for  its  name  and 
London  for  its  model.  The  Lincolnshire  borough 
on  the  Witham  was  to  be  its  prototype  only  in 
name.  The  founders  would  have  their  capital 
town  be  to  New  England  in  its  humble  way  what 
London  was  to  Old  England.  So  Boston  was 
builded,  a  likeness  in  miniature  to  London. 

[4] 


The  Storied  Town 

This  London  look  and  Old  England  aspect,  we 
remarked,  remained  to  and  through  the  Revolu- 
tion; and  in  a  shadowy  way  remains  to-day,  as 
our  guest  would  see.  It  was  indeed  a  natural 
family  likeness,  for,  as  the  record  shows,  Boston 
from  the  beginning  was  the  central  point  of  the 
most  thoroughly  English  community  in  the  New 
World.  There  was  no  infusion  of  a  foreign  ele- 
ment of  consequence  until  the  end  of  the  Colony 
period  and  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
Then  the  French  Huguenots  had  begun  to  appear 
and  mingle  with  the  native  Puritans.  But  while 
early  in  the  Province  period  this  element  became 
sufficient  in  numbers  to  set  up  a  church  of  its 
own,  and  to  bring  about  some  softening  of  the 
old  austerities  of  the  Puritan  town  life,  it  did  not 
impair  the  English  stamp.  These  French  Huguenots 
easily  assimilated  in  the  community,  which  wel- 
comed them,  and  in  time  these  competent  artisans 
and  merchants,  the  Bowdoins,  the  Faneuils,  Char- 
dons,  Sigourneys,  Reveres,  Molineuxes,  Greenleafs, 
became  almost  as  English,  or  American-English, 
as  the  rest.  Nor  was  the  stamp  impaired  by  the 
infusion  of  Scotch  and  Irish  into  the  Colony  in 
increasing  numbers   during  the  latter  half  of  the 

[5] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

seventeenth  and  the  early  eighteenth  centuries; 
nor  by  the  floating  population  of  various  nation- 
alities naturally  drawn  to  a  port  of  consequence, 
as  Boston  was,  the  chief  in  the  colonies  from  the 
outset.  These  floaters,  coming  and  going,  merely 
lent  variety  and  picturesqueness  —  or  brought 
temporary  trouble  —  to  the  sober  streets.  Up  to 
the  Revolution  the  population  remained  homo- 
geneous, with  the  dominating  influences  distinct- 
ively of  English  lineage.  When  with  the  Revo- 
lution the  English  yoke  was  thrown  off  and  the 
"Bostoneers"  tore  down  every  emblem  of  royalty 
and  every  sign  of  a  Tory  and  burned  them  in 
a  huge  bonfire  in  front  of  the  Old  State  House, 
and  afterward  re-named  King  Street  "  State",  and 
Queen  Street  " Court",  they  could  not  blot  out 
its  English  mark.  And  well  into  the  nineteenth 
century,  when  in  1822  Boston  emerged  from  a 
town  to  a  city,  the  population  was  still  "singu- 
larly homogeneous";  it  came  to  cityhood  slowly 
and  somewhat  reluctantly  after  repeated  attempts, 
the  first  early  in  the  Colony  period.  Edmund 
Quincy,  in  his  fascinating  life  of  his  distinguished 
father,  Josiah  Quincy,  writing  of  the  municipality 
in    1823    during   Josiah   Quincy's    first   administra- 

[6] 


The  Storied  Town 

tion  as  mayor  —  he  was  the  city's  second  mayor  — 
observes:  "The  great  Irish  and  German  emigration 
had  not  then  set  in.  The  city  was  eminently 
English  in  its  character  and  appearance,  and 
probably  no  town  of  its  size  in  England  had  a 
population  of  such  unmixed  English  descent  as  the 
Boston  of  that  day.  It  was  Anglis  ipsis  Anglior 
—  more  English  than  the  English  themselves. 
The  inhabitants  of  New  England  at  that  time 
were  descended,  with  scarcely  any  admixture  of 
foreign  blood,  from  the  Puritan  emigration  of  the 
seventeenth   century." 

This  complexion  remained  untarnished  for  a 
decade  or  so  longer.  The  infusion  of  foreign  ele- 
ments that  changed  it  began  about  the  latter 
eighteen-thirties  and  the  early  forties,  with  the 
development  of  large  New  England  industries, 
of  which  Boston  was  the  financial  center  —  the 
building  of  canals,  turnpikes,  railroads,  factories; 
the  expansion  of  commerce  with  the  advent 
of  steamships.  It  came  rapidly,  too,  this  change 
in  complexion,  when  fairly  begun.  Lemuel  Shat- 
tuck's  census  of  Boston  for  1845,  a  local  classic 
in  its  way,  disclosed  a  state  of  affairs  which  as- 
tonished the  self-satisfied  Bostonian  of  that  day 

[7] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

in  its  demonstration  that  the  native  born  com- 
prised only  a  little  more  than  one  third  of  the 
population,  "the  remainder  being  emigrants  from 
other  places  in  the  United  States  or  from  foreign 
countries."  Within  the  next  half-century  the 
proportion  had  become  one  third  of  foreign  birth, 
and  another  third  of  foreign  parentage.  Yet 
withal,  the  old  English  likeness  was  not  shat- 
tered; it  was   but  dimmed. 

As  the  founders  and  settlers  brought  with  them 
all  their  beloved  old-home  characteristics  and 
would  transplant  them,  as  was  possible,  in  their 
new  home,  so  we  find  their  earliest  "crooked 
little  streets"  with  old  London  names.  So  the 
earlier  social  life,  grim  though  it  was  with  its 
puritanical  tinge,  is  seen  to  have  been  old  English 
in  a  smaller  and  narrower  way.  So  were  the 
manners  and  customs.  The  taverns  were  named 
for  old  London  inns.  The  shop  signs  repeated 
old    London    symbols. 

And  to-day,  as  we  ramble  about  the  shadowy 
precincts  of  the  Colony  Town,  we  chance  delect- 
ably  here  and  there  upon  a  twisting  street  yet 
holding  its  first-given  London  name — a  London- 
like   old    court,    byway,    or    alley;    a    Londonish 

[8] 


m  <_.■..■.•_■. 


MTO>. 


■  MS 


The  Storied  Town 

foot-passage  making  short  cut  between  thorough- 
fares; an  arched  way  through  buildings  in  old 
London  style.  So,  too,  we  find  yet  lingering, 
though  long  since  in  disuse,  an  old,  London- 
fashioned  underground  passage  or  two  between 
courts  or  one-time  habitations,  suggestive  of 
smuggling  days  and  of  romance.  Such  is  that 
grim  underground  passage  between  old  Province 
Court  and  Harvard  Place,  issuing  on  Washington 
Street  opposite  the  Old  South  Meeting-house, 
which  starts  in  the  court  near  a  plumbing  shop 
and  runs  alongside  the  huge  granite  foundations 
of  the  rear  wall  of  the  old  Province  House, 
seat  of  the  royal  governors,  now  long  gone  save 
its  side  wall  of  Holland  brick,  which  still  remains 
intact.  This  passage  must  have  eluded  Haw- 
thorne, else  surely  it  would  have  figured  in  one 
of  his  incomparable  "Legends"  of  this  rare  place 
of  Provincial  pomp  and  elegance.  Then  there 
was,  until  recent  years,  that  other  and  more 
significant  passage,  opening  from  this  one,  and 
extending  under  the  Province  House  and  the 
highway  in  front,  eastward  toward  the  sea. 
Gossip  Tradition  has  it,  or  some  latter-day  dis- 
coverer  has   fancied,   that   by   this   passage   some 

I  ii  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

of  Howe's  men  made  their  escape  to  the  water- 
front at  the  Evacuation.  Others  call  it  a  smug- 
gler's passage.  In  that  day  the  water  came  up 
Milk  Street  to  the  present  Liberty  Square,  and 
southward  to  old  Church  Green,  which  used  to 
be  at  the  junction  of  Summer  and  Bedford  streets. 
An  explorer  of  this  passage  —  the  engineer  of 
the  tavern  which  now  occupies  the  site  of  the 
Province  House  orchard  (a  genuine  antiquary  — 
this  engineer,  who,  during  service  with  the  tavern 
from  its  erection,  has  delved  deep  into  colonial 
history  of  this  neighborhood),  says  that  its  out- 
let apparently  was  somewhere  near  Church  Green. 
It  was  closed  up  in  part  in  late  years  by  build- 
ing operations,  and  further  by  the  construction 
of  the  Washington  Street  Tunnel. 

The  peninsula  as  the  colonists  found  it  we 
recalled  from  the  familiar  description  of  the  local 
historians.  It  was  a  neck  of  land  jutting  out 
at  the  bottom  of  Massachusetts  Bay  with  a 
fine  harbor  on  its  sea  side;  at  its  back,  the  Charles 
River,  uniting  at  its  north  end  with  the  Mystic 
River  as  it  enters  the  harbor  from  the  north 
side  of  Charlestown;  its  whole  territory  only 
about   four   miles    in    circuit;    its    less   than   eight 

[  12] 


The  Storied  Town 

hundred  acres  comprising  several  abrupt  eleva- 
tions, with  valleys  between.  The  loftiest  elevation 
was  the  three-peaked  hill  in  its  heart,  which  gave  it 
its  first  English  name  of  Trimountain,  and  became 
Beacon,  on  the  river  side;  the  next  in  height,  on 
the  harbor  front,  were  the  north  and  south  pro- 
montories of  a  great  cove,  which  became  respec- 
tively Copp's  Hill  and  Fort  Hill.  This  peninsula 
was  sparsely  clad  with  trees,  but  thick  in  bushes 
and  reeds,  the  surface  indented  by  four  deep 
coves,  inlets  of  ocean  and  river,  and  by  creeks 
and  ponds;  and  with  sea  margins  wide,  flat, 
oozy.  The  original  area,  our  guest  was  told, 
was  expanded  to  more  than  eighteen  hundred 
acres  in  subsequent  periods  in  the  nineteenth 
century  by  the  filling  in  of  the  coves,  creeks,  and 
ponds  and  the  reclamation  of  marshes  and  flats. 
The  Town  was  begun  round  about  the  Market 
Place,  which  was  at  the  head  of  the  present 
State  Street,  where  is  now  the  Old  State  House. 
About  the  Market  Place  the  first  homes  were 
built  and  the  first  highways  struck  out.  Thence 
meandered  the  earliest  of  those  legendary  "cow 
paths,"  the  lanes  from  which  evolved  the  "crooked 
little  streets"  leading  to  the  home  lots  and  gardens 

[  13] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

of  settlers.  State  Street  and  Washington  Street 
were  the  first  highways,  the  one  "The  Great 
Street  to  the  Sea",  the  other  "The  High  Waye  to 
Roxberrie",  where  the  peninsula  joined  the  main- 
land, perhaps  along  Indian  trails.  At  the  outset 
the  "High  Waye"  reached  only  as  far  as  School 
and  Milk  streets,  where  is  now  the  Old  South 
Meeting-house,  and  this  was  early  called  Cornhill. 
Soon,  however,  a  further  advance  was  made  to 
Summer,  this  extension  later  being  called  Marl- 
borough Street,  in  commemoration  of  the  vic- 
tory of  Blenheim.  In  a  few  years  a  third  street 
was  added,  toward  Essex  and  Boylston  streets, 
named  Newbury.  The  "sea"  then  came  up 
in  the  Great  Cove  from  the  harbor  fairly  close 
to  the  present  square  of  State  Street,  for  high- 
water  mark  was  at  the  present  Kilby  Street 
on  the  south  side  and  Merchants  Row  on  the 
north  side.  The  Great  Cove  swept  inside  of 
these  streets.  Merchants  Row  followed  the 
shore  northward  to  a  smaller  cove,  stretching 
from  where  is  now  North  Market  Street  and  the 
Quincy  Market  (the  first  Mayor  Quincy's  monu- 
ment) and  over  the  site  of  Faneuil  Hall  to  Dock 
Square,    which   became   the   Town   Dock.      Other 

[  Hi 


The  Storied  Town 

pioneer  highways  were  the  nucleus  of  the  present 
Tremont  Street,  originally  running  along  the 
northeastern  spurs  of  the  then  broad-spreading 
Beacon  Hill  and  passing  through  the  Common; 
Hanover  Street,  at  first  a  narrow  lane,  from  what 
is  now  Scollay  Square,  and  Ann,  afterward 
North  Street,  from  Dock  Square,  both  leading 
to  the  ferries  by  Copp's  Hill,  where  tradition 
says  the  Indians  had  their  ferry.  Court  Street 
was  first  Prison  Lane,  from  the  Market  Place 
to  the  prison,  a  grewsome  dungeon,  early  set  up, 
where  now  stands  the  modern  City  Hall  Annex.  In 
its  day  it  harbored  pirates  and  Quakers,  and 
Hawthorne  fancied  it  for  the  opening  scenes  of 
his  "Scarlet  Letter."  School  Street  took  its  name 
from  the  first  schoolhouse  and  the  first  school, 
whence  sprang  the  Boston  Latin  School,  which 
felicitates  itself  that  it  antedates  the  university 
at  Cambridge  and  "dandled  Harvard  College  on 
its  knee."  Milk  Street,  first  "Fort  Lane",  was 
the  first  way  to  Fort  Hill  on  the  harbor  front. 
Summer  Street,  first  "Mylne  Lane",  led  to 
"Widow  TuthilPs  Windmill",  near  where  was 
Church  Green,  up  to  which  the  water  came. 
"Cow  Lane",  now  High  Street,  led  from  Church 

[  iSl 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

Green,  or  Mill  Lane,  to  the  foot  of  Fort  Hill. 
Essex  Street  was  originally  at  its  eastern  end 
part  of  the  first  cartway  to  the  Neck  and  Roxbury, 
a  beach  road  that  ran  along  the  south  shore  of 
the  South  Cove,  another  expansive  indentation, 
extending  from  the  harbor  on  the  south  side  of 
Fort  Hill  to  the  Neck.  Boylston  Street,  origi- 
nally "Frog  Lane",  and  holding  fast  to  this  bu- 
colic appellation  into  the  nineteenth  century,  was 
a  swampy  way,  running  westward  along  the  south 
side  of  Boston  Common  toward  the  open  Back 
Bay  —  the  back  basin  of  the  Charles  —  then 
flowing  up  to  a  pebbly  beach  at  the  Common's 
western  edge  and  to  the  present  Park  Square. 

Here,  then,  on  the  levels  about  the  Great 
Cove,  in  the  form  of  a  crescent,  facing  the  sea 
and  backed  by  the  three-peaked  hill,  the  Town 
was    established. 

The  first  occupation  was  within  the  scant  terri- 
tory bounded,  generally  speaking,  on  the  east  by 
State  Street  at  the  high-water  line  of  the  Great 
Cove;  northerly  by  Merchants  Row  around  to 
near  the  site  of  Faneuil  Hall;  northwesterly  by 
Dock  Square  and  Hanover  Street;  westerly  by 
the    great    hill    and    Tremont    Street;    southerly 

[  16] 


The  Storied  Town 

by  School  and  Milk  streets;  and  Milk  Street 
again  to  the  water,  then  working  up  toward 
the  present  Liberty  Square  at  the  junction  of 
Kilby,  Water,  and  Batterymarch  streets.  Soon, 
however,  the  limits  expanded,  reaching  south- 
ward to  Summer  Street,  and  not  long  after  to 
Essex  and  Boylston  streets;  eastward,  to  the  har- 
bor front  at  and  around  Fort  Hill;  westward  and 
northwestward,  about  another  broad  cove  —  this  the 
North  Cove,  later  the  "Mill  Cove"  with  busy  mills 
about  it,  an  indentation  on  the  north  of  Beacon 
Hill  by  the  widening  of  the  Charles  River  at  its 
mouth,  and  covering  the  space  now  Haymarket 
Square;  and  northward,  over  the  peninsula's  North 
End,  which  early  became  the  seat  of  gentility. 

No  further  expansion  of  moment  was  made 
through  the  Colony  period,  and  the  extension  was 
slight  during  the  Province  period.  Beacon  Hill, 
except  its  slopes,  remained  till  after  the  Revo- 
lution in  its  primitive  state,  its  long  western  reach 
a  place  of  pastures  over  which  the  cows  roamed, 
and  the  barberry  and  the  wild  rose  grew. 

The  foot  of  the  Common  on  the  margin  of  the 
glinting  Back  Bay  was  the  Town's  west  bound- 
ary till   after  the  Revolution   and   into  the  nine- 

[  i7l 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

teenth  century.  Till  then  the  tide  of  the  Back 
Bay  flowed  up  the  present  Beacon  Street  some 
two  hundred  feet  above  the  present  Charles  Street. 
The  Town's  southern  limit,  except  a  few  houses 
toward  the  Neck  on  the  fourth  link  of  the  high- 
way to  Roxbury  (called  Orange  Street  in  honor  of 
the  House  of  Orange),  was  still  Essex  and  Boyls- 
ton  streets.  The  one  landway  to  the  mainland, 
till  after  the  second  decade  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  remained  the  long,  lean  Neck  to  Rox- 
bury. The  only  water  way,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Town,  was  by  means  of  ships'  boats,  after- 
ward by  scows.  No  bridge  from  Boston  was 
built   till   the   Revolution  was   two   years   past. 

So  the  " storied  town"  remained,  till  the  close 
of  the  historic  chapter,  a  little  one,  the  built- 
up  territory  of  which  could  easily  be  covered  in  a 
stroll  of  a  day  or  two. 

From  its  establishment  as  the  capital,  Boston's 
history  was  so  interwoven  with  that  of  the  Colony 
that  in  England  the  Colony  came  early  to  be  desig- 
nated the  "Bostoneers",  and  the  charter  which 
the  founders  brought  with  them  and  for  the  reten- 
tion of  which  the  colonists  were  in  an  almost  con- 
stant struggle,  was  termed  the  "Boston  Charter." 

[  18] 


II 

OLD  STATE  HOUSE,  DOCK  SQUARE,  FANEUIL  HALL 

THE  first  governor's  "mansion",  the  first 
minister's  house,  the  meeting-house  which 
was  the  first  public  structure  to  be  erected,  set 
up  in  the  Town's  second  summer,  and  the  dwell- 
ings and  warehouses  of  the  first  shopkeeper  and 
of  the  wider  merchant-traders,  were  grouped 
about  the  Market  Place  on  the  central  "Great 
Street  to  the  Sea."  Other  first  citizens  located 
in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Town  Dock.  Others 
along  the  High  Waye  between  the  Dock  and  School 
and  Bromfield  streets;  on  Milk  Street;  and 
round  about  the  "Springgate"  —  Spring  Lane  — 
where  was  one  of  those  bounteous  springs  which 
had  drawn  Winthrop  and  his  followers  to  the 
peninsula.  A  few  were  scattered  on  School 
Street;  on  the  nucleus  of  Tremont  Street  along 
the  spurs  of  Beacon  Hill;  and  about  Hanover 
Street  and  the  other  lane  to  the  North  End. 
The  first  tavern  was  set  up  on  the  High  Waye,  in 

[  19] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

comfortable  reach  of  the  center  of  things.  The 
occupation  of  the  North  End  was  begun  actively 
within  the  Town's  first  decade. 

The  pioneer  houses  were  generally  of  one  story 
and  with  thatched  roof.  But  very  soon  more  sub- 
stantial structures  were  raised,  mostly  of  wood; 
and  by  the  time  that  the  Town  was  twenty  years 
old,  its  buildings  were  sufficiently  advanced  to  be 
described  by  the  contemporary  historian  as  "beau- 
tifull  and  large,  some  fairly  set  forth  with  Brick, 
Tile,  Stone,  and  Slate,  and  orderly  placed  with 
comly  streets  whose  continuall  inlargement  pres- 
sages  some  sumptuous  City."  Hipped  roofs 
were  coming  into  vogue;  and  houses  with  "jet- 
ties", projecting  stories.  At  forty,  the  Town 
was  showing  a  few  of  those  three-story  brick 
houses,  broad-fronted,  with  arched  windows,  which 
are  pictured  as  early  colonial.  Some  of  the  few 
stone  houses  were  of  ambitious  style  and  propor- 
tions. Notable  was  the  "Gibbs  house",  on  Fort 
Hill,  the  seat  of  Robert  Gibbs,  merchant.  "A 
stately  edifice  which  it  is  thought  will  stand  him 
in  little  less  than  £3000.  before  it  be  fully  fin- 
ished", was  Josselyn's  description  in  1671  or 
thereabouts,    when    it    was    building.      It    was    in 

[  20] 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

this  Gibbs  house  that  Andros  lodged  on  his  first 
coming  into  the  Town,  and  in  it  were  quartered 
his  guard  of  "about  sixty  red  coats."  Grandest 
of  all  was  the  Sergeant  house,  on  Marlborough 
Street,  nearly  opposite  the  Old  South,  set  back 
from  the  thoroughfare  in  stately  exclusiveness, 
the  mansion  of  Peter  Sergeant,  a  rich  merchant 
from  London,  erected  in  1679,  and,  after  the 
opulent  merchant's  death,  bought  by  the  Province, 
in  1 716,  and  becoming  the  famous  Province 
House,  official  home  of  the  royal  governors. 
Before  the  middle  of  the  Province  period,  pros- 
perous Bostonians  had  begun  erecting  mansions 
of  that  finest  type  of  American  colonial,  the 
great,  roomy  house,  generally  of  brick  though 
often  of  wood,  with  high  brick  ends,  the  few 
remaining  relics  of  which  in  Salem,  Newburyport, 
Portsmouth,  fewer  in  Cambridge,  so  comfort  the 
eye.  These  highly  dignified  Boston  mansions 
were  not  infrequently  set  in  spacious  gardens,  and 
surrounded  with  luscious  fruit  orchards,  refreshing 
the  town  with  their  pleasant  aspect.  All  long 
since  disappeared.  The  distinctive  Boston  "swell 
front"  was  of  the  early  nineteenth  century,  after 
houses  in  block  began  to  make  their  appearance. 

[21  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

Bulfinch,  the  pioneer  native  architect,  was  among 
the  earliest  of  its  builders. 

The  Market  Place  lay  open  through  the  Town's 
first  quarter  century  and  more,  the  central  resort 
for  business  or  for  gossip.  In  its  third  year,  by 
order  of  the  General  Court,  Boston  was  made  a 
market  town,  and  Thursday  was  appointed  market 
day.  At  the  same  time  the  " Thursday  Lecture" 
was  instituted,  the  weekly  discourse  which  was  to 
play  so  prominent  a  part  in  the  religious  life  of 
the  Town  for  more  than  two  centuries,  —  thus 
deftly  welding  trade  with  religion.  So  Thursday 
became  the  Town's  gala  day.  Then  the  country 
folk  flocked  into  Town  and  to  the  Market  Place 
and  bartered  their  products  for  the  wares  of  the 
Boston  tradesmen,  while  the  Lecture  was  taken  in 
as  a  pious  pastime.  Early  the  market  day 
became  a  favorite  time  for  public  punishments, 
for  their  disciplinary  effects,  perhaps,  upon  the 
"generality"  of  the  populace.  These  spectacles 
customarily  followed  the  Lecture,  through  which 
not  unfrequently  the  wretched  culprits  must  sit 
before  undergoing  their  ordeal.  Those  instruments 
of  torture,  the  whipping-post,  the  pillory,  and  the 
stocks,  were  placed  conspicuously  in  the  forefront, 

[   22] 


The  Old  State  House. 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

and  the  people  gazed  complacently  —  because  such 
were  the  customs  of  the  day  in  Old  as  in  New 
England  —  upon  whippings  of  women  as  well  as 
of  men,  and  sometimes  of  girls;  upon  the  exhibi- 
tion of  women  in  the  pillory  with  a  cleft  stick 
in  the  tongue,  for  too  free  exercise  of  this  ofttimes 
unruly  member.  The  show  of  a  forger  and  liar 
bound  to  the  whipping-post  "till  the  Lecture, 
from  the  first  bell",  when  his  ears  were  to  be 
clipped  off;  the  sight  of  whippings  and  ear  cut- 
tings, or  nose  slittings,  for  "scandalous  speeches 
against  the  church",  or  for  speaking  disrespect- 
fully of  the  ministers,  or  of  the  magistrates  were 
not  unusual.  Upon  such  or  even  worse  scourgings 
for  the  pettiest  of  offenses  as  for  graver  crimes 
the  good  people  were  freely  privileged  to  gaze. 
Nor  were  these  punishments  confined  to  the  hum- 
bler classes.  No  discrimination  was  made  between 
high  and  lowly  wrongdoers.  The  local  dry-as- 
dusts  love  to  tell  of  that  maker  of  the  first  Boston 
stocks  who,  "for  his  extortion,  takeing  I1.  13s. 
7d.  for  the  plank  and  wood  work",  was  the  first 
to  be  set  in  them.  And  there  is  satisfaction  in 
reading  of  the  case  of  one  "Nich.  Knopp",  who 
had   taken   upon   himself   to   cure   the   scurvy   by 

[2S] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

a  water  of  "noe  worth  nor  value,  which  he  sold 
at  a  very  deare  rate."  Surely  a  fine  of  five 
pounds,  with  imprisonment  "till  he  pay  his  fine, 
or  give  securitie  for  it,  or  els  to  be  whipped", 
and  making  him  liable  "to  any  man's  action  of 
whome  he  hath  received  money  for  the  said 
water"  was  none  too  rough  for  this  scamp. 
Sometimes  the  woman  with  the  scarlet  badge  on 
her  breast  may  have  been  seen  among  the  market- 
day  gatherers.  Here,  too,  unorthodox  books  were 
publicly  burned. 

Through  these  first  thirty  years  of  the  Town, 
the  Meeting-house  stood  beside  the  Market  Place, 
serving  for  all  Town  and  Colony  business  as  well 
as  for  all  religious  purposes.  At  first  it  was  a 
pioneer  rude  house  of  stone  and  mud  walls  and 
thatched  roof  set  up  on  the  south  side  (its  site 
marked  by  a  neat  tablet  above  the  portal  of  an 
office  building)  but  lasting  only  eight  years;  then 
its  more  substantial  successor  of  wood,  placed  on 
the  Cornhill  of  the  High  Waye  (in  front  of  where 
is  now  and  long  has  been  Young's,  of  savorous 
memories).  Then  in  1657-1659,  the  Town  House 
—  practically  a  Town  and  Colony  House  com- 
bined, of  which  the  conserved  Old  State  House  is 

[26] 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

the  lineal  descendant  —  was  erected  in  the  heart  of 
the  Market  Place,  and  in  its  stead  became  the 
business  exchange  and  the  official  center.  Thus 
the  Market  Place  was  in  large  part  closed,  and 
the  square  at  the  Town  House  front  alone  be- 
came the  public  gathering  place.  So  the  square 
remained  the  people's  rendezvous  upon  occasions 
of  moment  to  the  end  of  Colony  and  Province 
days,  a  central  setting  of  what  another  English- 
man with  cousinly  graciousness  has  termed  "the 
great  part"  that  Boston  played  "in  the  historical 
drama  of  the  New  World." 

How  this  first  Town  and  Colony  House  was 
provided  for  in  the  longest  will  on  record  by  wor- 
thy Captain  Robert  Keayne,  the  enterprising  mer- 
chant tailor  and  public-spirited  citizen,  who  be- 
came the  richest  man  of  his  time  in  the  Town,  yet 
could  not  escape  penalty  and  censure  by  court 
and  church  for  taking  exorbitant  profits,  is  a 
familiar  Old  Boston  story.  Despite  his  disciplin- 
ing by  the  very  paternal  government,  the  captain 
remained  a  Boston  worthy  in  excellent  standing 
and  zealous  in  Town  and  Church  affairs,  till  the 
end  of  his  days.  His  memory  is  kept  green  as  the 
father   of   the   still   lusty   Ancient   and   Honorable 

[27] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

Artillery  Company,  the  oldest  military  organiza- 
tion in  the  country,  and  father  of  the  first  Public 
Library  in  America,  as  well  as  father  of  the  first 
Boston  Town  House,  in  which  the  making  of  large 
history  was  begun.  Keayne  indeed  recovered 
favor  by  acknowledging  his  "covetous  and  cor- 
rupt behaviour."  But  he  closed,  in  his  defense  of 
it,  with  the  offer  of  the  business  rules  that  had 
guided  him;  and  much  space  in  that  prodigious 
will  —  one  hundred  and  fifty-eight  folio  pages,  all 
"writ  in  his  own  hand"  —  was  devoted  to  a 
justification  of  his  business  conduct.  Nothing 
more  refreshing  illustrates  the  business  ethics  of 
that  simple  day  than  this  Puritan  merchant's 
defense  and  the  minister's  offset  to  it.  The  rules 
that  Keayne  pled  as  guiding  him  were  these: 

"First,  That  if  a  merchant  lost  on  one  com- 
modity he  might  help  himself  on  the  price  of 
another.  Second,  That  if  through  want  of  skill 
or  other  occasions  his  commodity  cost  him  more 
than  the  price  of  the  market  in  England,  he  might 
then  sell  it  for  more  than  the  price  of  the  market 
in  New  England." 

The  minister,  in  this  case  John  Cotton,  would 
set  up  this  higher  code: 

[  28] 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

"First,  That  a  man  may  not  sell  above  the 
current  price.  Second,  That  when  a  man  loseth 
in  his  commodity  for  want  of  skill  he  must  look 
at  it  as  his  own  fault  or  cross,  and  therefore  must 
not  lay  it  upon  another.  Third,  That  when  a  man 
loseth  by  casualty  at  sea  etc.,  it  is  a  lofs  cast 
upon  him  by  Providence,  and  he  may  not  ease 
himself  of  it  by  casting  it  upon  another  for  so  a 
man  should  seem  to  provide  against  all  provi- 
dences, etc.  that  he  should  never  lose  2:  but  where 
there  is  a  scarcity  of  the  commodity  there  men 
may  raise  their  prices,  for  now  it  is  a  hand  of 
God  upon  the  commodity  and  not  the  person. 
Fourth,  That  a  man  may  not  ask  any  more  for 
his  commodity  than  his  selling  price,  as  Ephron 
to  Abraham,  the  land  is  worth  so  much." 

Keayne  had  been  a  successful  merchant  tailor 
in  London  before  coming  out,  and  a  London  mili- 
tary man.  He  was  for  several  years  a  member  of 
the  Honourable  Artillery  Company  of  London,  after 
which  the  Boston  company  was  modeled.  He 
was  made  the  first  commander  of  the  Boston  com- 
pany upon  its  organization  on  the  first  Monday 
in  June,  1638  —  the  day  that  has  ever  since,  with 
the  exception  of  lapses   in  the  Civil  War  period, 

[29] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

been  celebrated  in  Boston  with  all  the  old-time 
pomp  and  ceremony  as  Artillery  Election  Day. 
When  he  died,  the  year  before  the  beginning  of 
his  Town  house,  he  was  presumably  honored  with 
a  grand  military  funeral,  and  was  buried  beside 
the  other  fathers  in  the  old  First  Burying-ground, 
which  became  the  King's  Chapel.  He  was  par- 
ticularly associated  with  the  Boston  founders  as 
the  brother-in-law  of  John  Wilson,  the  first  minis- 
ter and  the  personage  next  in  consequence  to 
John  Winthrop  and  John  Cotton  in  the  early 
Town  life.  Their  seats  were  nearly  opposite,  on 
either  side  of  the  Market  Place.  Keayne's  was 
on  the  south  side,  the  comfortable  house,  the  shop, 
and  the  garden  occupying  the  ample  lot  between 
"Pudding  Lane"  —  Devonshire  Street  —  and  Corn- 
hill.  Wilson's  glebe,  on  the  north  side,  facing 
the  square,  was  an  even  more  generous  lot,  extend- 
ing back  to  the  water  of  the  Town  Dock  by  Dock 
Square,  and  covering  Devonshire  Street  north, 
which  originally  was  a  zigzag  path  from  the 
Market  Place  to  the  head  of  the  Dock  across  the 
minister's  garden.  After  the  path  had  expanded 
into  a  lane,  and  had  sometime  borne  the  title 
of  "Crooked,"  it  was  given  the  minister's   name; 

[30] 


In  Dock  Square. 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

and  as  "Wilson's  Lane"  it  remained  to  modern 
times  when,  with  the  extension  of  Devonshire 
Street  through  the  ancient  way,  the  good  old 
colonial  appellation  was  stupidly  dropped.  A  cen- 
tury after  Keayne's  day,  the  British  Main  Guard 
was  stationed  on  the  site  of  his  seat,  with  its 
guns  pointed  menacingly  at  the  south  door  of  the 
present  Old  State  House;  and  where  Parson 
Wilson's  house  had  stood  was  the  Royal  Exchange 
Tavern,  before  which,  and  the  Royal  Custom 
House  on  the  lower  Royal  Exchange  Lane  (now 
Exchange  Street)  corner,  were  lined  up  Captain 
Preston's  file  at  the  "Boston  Massacre." 

Keayne  would  have  a  Town  House  ample  not 
only  for  the  accommodation  of  the  Town  govern- 
ment, Town  meetings,  the  courts,  and  the  General 
Court,  but  also  of  the  church  elders,  a  public 
library,  and  an  armory.  But  the  sum  that  he 
bequeathed  for  his  house  and  for  a  conduit  and 
a  market  place  besides,  was  only  three  hundred 
pounds.  Accordingly  subscription  papers  were 
passed  among  the  townsfolk,  and  they  contributed 
an  additional  fund  which,  with  the  legacy  and  a  little 
aid  from  the  Colony  treasury,  warranted  the  raising 
of  a  satisfactory  structure.     The  townsmen  being 

[33 1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

poor  in  cash,  most  of  their  subscriptions  were  pay- 
able in  merchandise,  in  building  materials,  in  a 
specified  number  of  days'  work,  or  in  materials 
and  work  combined.  So  this  pioneer  capitol  duly 
appeared,  completed  in  March,  1659,  after  a  year 
and  a  half  in  construction,  a  "substantial  and 
comely  building",  and  a  credit  to  the  Town  and 
to  its  builders.  Its  erection .  marked  an  epoch  in 
the  Town's  history.  The  quaint  pictures  of  it 
in  the  books  are  fanciful  ones,  drawn  from  the 
details  of  the  contract,  for  no  sketch  is  extant. 
It  was  a  stout-timbered  structure  set  up  on  pillars 
ten  feet  high,  twenty-one  of  them,  and  jettying 
out  from  the  pillars  "three  foot  every  way",  a 
story  and  a  half,  with  three  gable  ends,  a  balus- 
trade, and  turrets.  It  was  called  the  fairest 
public  structure  in  all  the  colonies.  The  open 
space  inside  the  pillars  at  first  was  a  free  market 
place.  Later,  perhaps,  after  its  repair  and  en- 
richment at  a  considerable  cost,  which  was  divided 
between  the  Colony  and  the  Town  and  County, 
parts  were  closed  in  for  small  shops;  and  the  first 
bookstalls  were  here.  In  this  open  space,  also, 
or  on  the  floor  above,  was  the  "walk  for  the 
merchants"    after   the   London   Exchange   fashion. 

[34] 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

At  first  'change  hour  was  from  eleven  to  twelve. 
After  a  time  the  custom  was  introduced  of  an- 
nouncing the  opening  of  'change  by  the  ringing 
of  a  bell;  and  the  bell-ringer  was  to  be  allowed 
twelve  pence  a  year  for  every  person  commonly 
resorting  to  the  place. 

This  comely  capitol  served  the  Town  and 
Colony  for  half  a  century:  through  the  remainder 
of  the  Colony  period,  the  Inter-Charter  period, 
and  into  the  Province  period.  Here  sat  the  colo- 
nial governors  from  Endicott  to  Bradstreet.  Then 
came  Joseph  Dudley,  as  President  of  New  Eng- 
land, with  his  fifteen  councillors.  Then  Andros, 
as  "captain-general  and  governor-in-chief  of  all 
New  England",  till  his  overthrow  by  the  bloodless 
revolution  of  April,  1689,  "the  first  forcible  re- 
sistance to  the  crown  in  America",  when  the 
"Declaration  of  the  Gentlemen,  Merchants,  and 
Inhabitants  of  Boston"  was  proclaimed  from  the 
balcony  overlooking  the  square.  Then  Brad- 
street  again,  now  the  Nestor  of  the  old  magis- 
trates, in  his  eighty-seventh  year,  yet  hale,  sitting 
with  the  "council  of  peace  and  safety."  Then 
the  earlier  of  the  royal  governors,  under  the 
Province    Charter,  beginning    with    the    rough-dia- 

[35  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

mond  sailor-soldier  Phips,  when  Boston  had  be- 
come the  capital  of  a  vast  State,  with  the  terri- 
tories of  Plymouth  Colony,  of  Maine,  and  of 
Nova  Scotia  added  to  Massachusetts.  And  this 
was  the  Town  House  in  which,  in  1686,  Randolph 
instituted,  with  the  Reverend  Robert  Ratcliffe, 
brought  out  from  London,  as  rector,  the  first 
Church  of  England  church  in  Boston,  when  the 
authorities  rigidly  refused  the  use  of  any  of  the 
orthodox  meeting-houses  in  the  Town,  now  three, 
by  the  Episcopalians;  but  one  of  which  —  the 
Old  South,  then  the  Third  —  Andros  speedily 
seized  for  their  occupation  alternately  with  the 
regular  congregation.  It  was  a  place,  too,  of 
festivities,  this  Town  House.  Within  it  state 
dinners  were  given;  and  pleasing  receptions  to  the 
visiting  guest.  John  Dunton,  the  gossipy  London 
bookseller,  here  in  1686,  tells  of  being  invited  by 
Captain  Hutchinson  to  dine  with  "the  Governor 
and  Magistrates  of  Boston",  the  "place  of  enter- 
tainment being  the  Town-Hall"  and  the  feast 
"rich  and  noble." 

Then,  on  an  early  October  night  of  171 1,  this 
house  went  down  in  ashes  in  a  great  fire  —  the 
eighth  "great  fire"  which  the  Town  had  suffered 

[36] 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

in  its  short  existence  of  eighty  years  —  along  with 
the  neighboring  Meeting-house,  and  a  hundred  other 
buildings,  —  dwelling-houses,  shops,  and  taverns. 
The  fire  swept  over  both  sides  of  Cornhill  be- 
tween the  Meeting-house  and  School  Street,  and 
both  sides  of  the  upper  parts  of  King  and  Queen 
streets.  It  was  in  this  affliction  that  Increase 
Mather,  the  minister-statesman,  saw  the  wrath 
of  God  upon  the  Town  for  its  profanation  of  the 
Sabbath.  "Has  not  God's  Holy  Day  been  Pro- 
faned in  New  England!"  he  exclaimed  in  his  next 
Sunday's  sermon,  graphically  entitled  "Burnings 
Bewailed."  "Have  not  Burdens  been  carried 
through  the  Streets  on  the  Sabbath  Day?  Have 
not  Bakers,  Carpenters,  and  other  Tradesmen 
been  employed  in  Servile  Works  on  the  Sabbath 
Day?"  He  would  have  stricter  enforcement  of 
the  strict  Puritan  Sunday  laws,  which  yet  closed 
the  Town  from  sunset  on  Saturday  to  sunset  on 
Sunday  against  all  toil  and  all  worldly  pleasure, 
permitted  no  strolling  on  street  or  Common,  no 
cart  to  pass  out  or  to  come  in,  no  horseman  or 
footman,  unless  satisfactory  statement  of  the 
necessity  of  the  travel  could  be  given.  And  this 
somber    observance    of    Sunday    continued    to   be 

[37] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

enforced  with  more  or  less  vigor  till  after  the 
Revolution.  There  is  a  pretty,  apocryphal  tale  of 
the  fining  of  Governor  Hancock  for  strolling  along 
the  Mall  of  the  Common  on  his  way  home  from 
church.  But  the  selectmen  of  171 1  took  the  more 
practical  step,  in  ordering  the  stricter  enforcement  of 
building  regulations,  and  in  influencing  a  reconstruc- 
tion of  the  burnt  district  of  brick  instead  of  wood. 
So,  on  the  ruins  of  the  old,  arose  a  new  Town 
and  Colony  House  of  brick,  a  new  brick  meeting- 
house, a  new  Cornhill  of  houses  and  shops,  largely 
of  brick.  The  outer  walls  of  the  new  capitol, 
completed  in  171 3,  we  see  in  the  present  building. 
It  was  a  grander  house  than  the  first.  There  was 
an  East  Chamber,  with  balcony  giving  on  the 
square,  handsomely  fitted  for  the  governor  and 
council,  a  Middle  Chamber  for  the  representatives, 
a  West  Chamber  for  the  courts;  and  in  other  parts 
comfortable  quarters  for  the  Town  officers.  The 
"walk  for  the  merchants"  was,  as  before,  on  the 
street  floor,  but  more  capacious;  while  'change 
hour  was  now  one  o'clock  as  in  London.  Pretty 
soon  the  exchange  was  surrounded  by  book- 
sellers' shops.  These  bookstalls,  all  having  a  good 
trade,    together    with    "five    printing-presses"    in 

[38] 


Faneuil  Hall  and  putney  Market. 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

the  Town,  "generally  full  of  work",  particularly 
impressed  the  Londoner,  Daniel  Neal,  visiting 
Boston  about  1719  and  writing  a  book  on  his 
American  impressions.  By  these,  he  flatteringly 
remarked,  "it  appears  that  Humanity  and  the 
Knowledge  of  Letters  flourish  more  here  than  in 
all  the  other  English  Plantations  put  together; 
for  in  the  City  of  New  York  there  is  but  one 
Bookseller's  Shop,  and  in  the  Plantations  of  Vir- 
ginia, Maryland,  Carolina,  Barbadoes,  and  the 
Islands,  none  at  all."  Thus  early  were  observed 
the  evidences  of  that  leadership  in  culture  upon 
which  the  Boston  of  yesterday  was  wont  much  to 
plume  itself. 

This  House  stood  in  its  grandeur,  a  "fine  piece 
of  building"  as  the  observant  Neal  characterized  it, 
for  thirty  years  only.  Then,  in  early  December, 
1747,  it  in  turn  was  burned,  all  but  its  walls. 
Three  years  after,  it  was  rebuilt  upon  and  in  the 
old  walls,  generally  with  the  same  interior  ar- 
rangement, except  the  quarters  for  the  Town  offi- 
cers, which  were  now  in  Faneuil  Hall,  erected 
five  years  before  the  Town  and  Colony  House 
burning.  In  the  interim,  the  General  Court  sat 
in  Faneuil  Hall;  while  the  rebuilding  of  the  Colony 

[41  1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

House  in  some  place  outside  of  Boston  was  agi- 
tated, or  the  occupation  of  some  other  site  in  the 
Town,  as  Fort  Hill  or  Boston  Common.  The 
present  building  therefore  is  that  of  1749,  with 
the  walls  of  171 3.  It  stands  restored  in  large  part 
to  the  appearance  it  bore  through  the  eventful 
fourteen  years  of  the  p re-Revolutionary  period, 
when  American  history  was  making  within  it  and, 
as  John  Adams  recorded,  "the  child  Independence 
was  born."  Thus  it  remains  the  most  interesting 
historical  building  of  its  period  in  the  country. 
And  it  is  to-day  cherished,  along  with  the  other 
two  spared  monuments  —  the  Old  South  Meet- 
ing-house and  Faneuil  Hall  —  that  distinctively 
commemorate  those  colonial,  provincial,  and  Rev- 
olutionary events  which  make  Boston  unique 
among  American  cities;  these  with  King's  Chapel 
and  Christ  Church,  are  treasured  by  all  classes  of 
Bostonians  with  equal  devotion  as  among  the  city's 
richest  assets.  The  sentimentalist  treasures  them 
for  their  historical  worth,  the  materialist  for  their 
commercial  value,  their  drawing  capacity,  luring 
to  the  Old  Town  as  to  a  Mecca  pilgrims  and  stran- 
gers of  the  prosperous  stripe,  from  far  and  wide, 
with  money  to  spend  in  the  shops  and  the  mart. 

[42] 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

But  ah!  what  a  fight  it  was,  what  a  succession 
of  fights,  to  retain  the  richer  in  accumulated  as- 
sociations, —  the  old  State  House  and  the  old 
Meeting-house!  And  so,  too,  hard  fights  were 
those  to  preserve  in  their  integrity  the  other 
landmarks  of  the  historic  past  that  have  been 
permitted  to  remain,  —  Boston  Common,  and  the 
three  ancient  burying-grounds  with  their  graves 
and  tombs  of  American  worthies.  To-day  let  a 
promoter  but  suggest  the  cutting  of  streets 
through  the  Common  to  relieve  the  pressure  of 
traffic,  and  straightway  he  is  sprung  upon  by 
public  opinion  and  threatened  with  ostracism. 
A  mayor  orders  the  taking  of  a  part  of  the  pre- 
serve for  a  public  structure,  and  within  twenty- 
four  hours  public  opinion  forces  him  to  cancel  the 
order.  And  yet  it  was  not  so  many  years  ago 
that  the  opening  of  an  avenue  through  its  length 
connecting  north  and  south  thoroughfare,  was  con- 
templated with  composure  by  many  of  those  who 
like  to  be  considered  the  "best  citizens",  and  the 
scheme  was  prevented  only  through  the  efforts 
of  a  small  contingent  of  that  kidney  whom 
Matthew  Arnold  calls  the  "saving  remnant",  who 
cultivated   public   opinion   to   revolt.     As   for   the 

[43  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

ancient  burying-grounds,  the  desecrators  years  ago 
got  in  their  work  to  a  woeful  extent  before  the 
preservers  could  act  to  check  it.  This  was  par- 
ticularly the  case  with  the  King's  Chapel  and  the 
Granary  grounds.  Under  the  direction  of  a 
sacrilegious  city  official,  to  suit  his  peasant  taste 
of  symmetry,  was  committed  that  "most  accursed 
act  of  vandalism"  (so  forcibly  and  justly  the 
generally  genial  Autocrat  characterized  it),  in  the 
uprooting  of  many  of  the  upright  stones  from  the 
graves  and  the  rearranging  of  them  as  edge 
stones  by  new  paths  then  struck  out.  This  is 
the  act  which  moved  the  Autocrat  to  that 
clever  mot,  almost  compensation  for  the  sacri- 
lege,—  that  "the  old  reproach"  in  epitaphs  "of 
'Here  lies''  never  had  such  a  wholesale  illustra- 
tion as  in  these  outraged  burial-places,  where 
the  stone  does  lie  above  and  the  bones  do  not 
lie  beneath."  A  later  attempt  to  open  a  pathway 
across  the  King's  Chapel  ground  to  accommodate 
passers  more  directly  from  Tremont  Street  to 
Court  Square,  proposed  by  restless  city  officials, 
and  frankly  as  an  entering  wedge  for  the  ulti- 
mate sale  of  the  ground  for  business  purposes,  or 
the  taking  for  an  extension  of  the  City  Hall,  was 

[44] 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

frustrated   alone   by   the   energetic   protest  of  the 
Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

The  battle  for  the  Old  State  House  waged  in- 
termittently through  forty  years,  or  from  the  time 
of  the  building's  relinquishment  as  the  City  Hall, 
in  1 841,  the  last  official  use  to  which  it  was  put. 
During  this  desolating  period  it  was  hideously 
transformed  for  trade  purposes  that  the  city, 
whose  property  it  then  was,  might  get  the  largest 
rentals  from  it.  Thus  it  stood  a  bedraggled  thing 
at  the  entrance  to  the  opulent  center  of  money 
and  stocks  and  bonds,  a  scandal  to  self-respecting 
Bostonians,  while  its  demolition  was  repeatedly 
agitated  as  a  useless  incumbrance  in  the  path 
of  trade.  In  one  of  the  periodical  wrestles  be- 
tween conservators  and  destroyers  when,  with  the 
adoption  of  a  street-widening  scheme,  the  building 
seemed  surely  doomed,  the  pride  of  Boston  was 
touched  by  a  breezy  offer  from  Chicago  to  buy 
it  and  transplant  it  there,  with  the  promise  that 
Chicago  would  protect  it  as  an  historical  monu- 
ment "that  all  America  should  revere."  When 
at  length,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Common,  through 
the  quickening  of  public  sentiment  by  the  "saving 
remnant",  its    preservation   was    secured,    and   its 

[45] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

restoration  had  been  in  part  accomplished,  its 
integrity  was  assailed  from  an  unexpected  quarter. 
The  local  transit  commission  seized  the  street 
story  and  the  basement  for  engineers'  working 
offices,  and  for  a  tunnel  railway  station.  At  this 
proceeding,  the  conservators  rose  to  a  final  and 
determined  move  for  the  reservation  of  the  build- 
ing by  law  solely  as  a  national  "historic  and 
patriotic  memorial",  free  of  all  business  or  com- 
mercial encroachments,  and  its  maintenance  as 
such.  They  got  all  they  sought,  except  the  oust- 
ing of  the  tunnel  station.  That,  as  we  see,  was 
permitted  to  abide,  and  so  prevent  complete 
restoration.  Yet  only  to  a  comparatively  slight 
extent.  Except  the  lower  part  of  this  east  end, 
and  the  foot  passage  through  it,  the  building 
appears  now  fully  restored  to  the  outward  and 
inward  eighteenth-century  aspect.  Its  occupa- 
tion, as  custodian,  by  the  Bostonian  Society, 
formed  to  promote  the  study  of  the  history  of 
Boston  and  to  preserve  its  antiquities,  an  out- 
growth of  the  organization  of  the  little  band  that 
led  fights  that  ultimately  saved  the  building,  is 
most  felicitous.  The  society's  collection  of  Old 
Boston  rareties,  portraits,  paintings,  prints,  manu- 

[46] 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

scripts,  mementoes,  is  rich  and  varied,  and  a  half- 
day  may  be  engagingly  spent  in  a  leisurely  review 
of  it. 

The  Faneuil  Hall  we  see  is  the  "Cradle  of 
Liberty"  of  pre-Revolutionary  days  enlarged  and 
embellished  in  the  early  nineteenth  century  to 
meet  the  requirements  of  later  generations.  It  is 
the  second  "cradle",  erected  in  1763  within  the 
frame  of  the  original  structure  of  1742,  doubled 
in  width  and  elevated  a  story,  and  its  auditorium 
doubled  in  height  and  supplied  with  galleries 
raised  on  Ionic  columns  at  the  line  of  the  old 
ceiling.  Except  in  parts  of  the  frame  —  and 
perhaps  in  the  gilded  grasshopper  that  tops  the 
cupola  vane  —  nothing  remains  of  the  house  that 
Peter  Faneuil  built  and  gave  to  the  Town,  and 
that  the  Town  in  gratitude  voted  should  be  called 
for  him  "forever." 

That  house,  in  January,  1762,  when  twenty 
years  old,  was  destroyed  by  fire,  all  but  its  outer 
shell,  like  the  second  Town  House  burned  fifteen 
years  before;  and  also  like  it,  its  successor  was 
built  upon  the  remaining  walls.  The  reconstruc- 
tion of  1763,  however,  was  practically  a  repro- 
duction of  the  original  edifice  in  style  and  propor- 

[47] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

tions,  so  that  in  the  present  Hall  we  have  traces 
of  the  architecture  of  the  Faneuil  gift.  That 
structure  was  distinguished  as  the  design  of  John 
Smibert,  the  Scotch  painter,  who,  establishing  his 
studio  in  the  Town  in  1729,  was  the  earliest  (if 
Peter  Pelham,  the  engraver  and  occasional  por- 
trait painter,  John  Singleton  Copley's  stepfather, 
is  not  to  be  so  classed)  to  introduce  good  art  in 
Boston  with  his  portraits  of  ministers  and  pro- 
vincial dignitaries.  In  the  enlargement  of  the  Hall 
of  1763,  and  the  refashioning  of  its  interior,  in 
1805,  we  see  the  hand  of  Charles  Bulfinch,  the 
pioneer  native  architect.  The  Faneuil  gift  was 
a  handsome  edifice,  measuring  only  forty  feet  in 
width  and  a  hundred  in  length,  of  two  stories, 
the  ground  story  for  market  use,  with  open 
arches,  the  auditorium  above,  low  studded,  the 
floor  accommodating  in  public  meeting  a  thousand 
persons.  Small  as  it  was,  visitors  pronounced 
it,  as  the  Town  vote  of  acceptance  termed  it,  a 
"noble  structure",  and  a  magnificent  gift  for  the 
times  from  a  single  individual.  Compared  with 
Captain  Keayne's  provision  for  the  Town  House 
a  century  earlier,  it  was  counted  princely.  But 
Boston   had   now   so   grown   in   importance   as   to 

[48] 


The  Quaint  Buildings  of  Cornhill. 


, 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

warrant  such  a  gift,  and  it  had  a  pretty  number  of 
affluent  townsmen  who  could  make  a  similar 
donation  as  comfortably  as  the  generous  Hugue- 
not merchant.  It  was  assumed  to  be  the  prin- 
cipal town  of  trade  "of  any  in  all  the  British 
American  colonies."  The  harbor  was  busy  with 
shipping.  Boston  trade  was  reaching  "into  every 
sea."  Industries  were  prospering,  regardless  of 
the  Parliamentary  laws  which  would  suppress 
colonial  manufactures.  Several  of  the  merchants 
were  enjoying  rich  revenues  from  productive  plan- 
tations in  the  West  Indies.  Refinement  and 
elegance  were  marking  the  homes  and  the  customs 
of  the  "gentry."  "There  are  several  families 
that  keep  a  coach  and  a  pair  of  horses,  and  some 
few  drive  with  four  horses",  wrote  a  Mr.  Bennett, 
Londoner,  in  Boston  about  1740. 

Peter  Faneuil  was  reveling  in  the  fortune  of 
his  uncle  Andrew  fresh  in  his  hands,  when  he 
made  his  offer  to  the  Town.  Andrew  Faneuil 
had  died  in  1737,  the  richest  man  in  Boston,  and 
had  bequeathed  his  handsome  estate  to  his 
favorite  nephew,  who  already  had  acquired  con- 
siderable property  through  his  own  activity  in 
business.     Peter  had  moved  into  his  uncle's  man- 

[51 1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

sion-house,  one  of  the  fairest  in  town,  and  was 
stocking  it  with  comforts  and  luxuries  for  his 
own  enjoyment  and  the  exercise  of  an  elegant 
hospitality.  "Send  me  five  pipes  of  your  very 
best  Madeira  wine  of  an  amber  colour,  and  as 
this  is  for  my  house,  be  very  careful  that  I  have 
the  best",  he  wrote  to  one  of  his  business  corre- 
spondents in  London.  To  another,  "Send  me  the 
latest  best  book  of  the  several  sorts  of  cookery, 
which  pray  let  be  of  the  largest  character  for  the 
benefit  of  the  maid's  reading."  Another  was 
requested  to  buy  for  him  for  a  house  boy,  "as 
likely  a  straight  negro  lad",  and  "one  as  tractable 
in  disposition"  as  his  correspondent  could  find. 
And  from  London  he  ordered  "a  handsome  chariot 
with  two  sets  of  harnesses",  and  the  Faneuil 
arms  engraved  thereon  in  the  best  manner,  "but 
not  too  gaudy." 

The  Faneuil  mansion  was  on  Tremont  Street, 
opposite  the  King's  Chapel  Burying-ground  and 
neighboring  historic  sites.  Just  north  of  it  had 
stood  the  colonial  Governor  Bellingham's  stone 
mansion,  which  he  was  occupying  when  first  chosen 
governor  in  1641,  and  the  scene  of  dignified  fes- 
tivities.     Next    north    of    Bellingham's    was    the 

[  52] 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

humbler  house  of  the  great  John  Cotton  and 
Cotton's  friend,  debonair  Harry  Vane's,  which 
adjoined  the  minister's  house.  The  Cotton  house 
and  garden  lot  were  south  of  the  entrance  to 
the  present  Pemberton  Square;  and  the  glebe 
extended  back  from  the  street  and  up  and  over 
the  east  peak  of  Beacon  Hill,  this  peak  then 
mounting  abruptly  and  high,  and  given  the  minis- 
ter's name  —  Cotton  Hill.  The  fair  Faneuil 
mansion,  built  by  the  rich  Andrew,  about  1710, 
was  a  broad-faced  house  of  brick,  painted  white, 
with  a  semicircular  balcony  over  the  wide  front 
door,  and  set  in  a  beautiful  garden,  with  terraces 
rising  at  the  back  against  the  still  remaining  hill. 
Here  Peter  flourished,  a  generous  host,  a  quietly 
beneficent  citizen,  an  amiable  gentleman,  five 
luxurious  years.  Then  he  died  suddenly,  on  the 
second  of  March,  1743,  of  dropsy,  in  his  forty- 
third  year.  And  as  it  happened,  the  first  annual 
Town  meeting  in  the  new  Hall  was  held  to  take 
action  on  his  death,  and  to  listen  to  an  eulogy 
of  him.  His  funeral  was  a  grand  one.  He  was 
buried  in  the  Old  Granary  Burying-ground  in  the 
tomb  of  his  uncle.  This  tomb  was  without  in- 
scription, marked  only  by  the  sculptured  arms  of 

[53 1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

the  Faneuil  family.  The  arms,  after  the  lapse  of 
years,  failed  to  identify  it,  and  where  Peter  was 
buried  became  a  local  query.  At  length,  a  delving 
antiquary  rediscovered  it,  and  the  good  man  in 
simplest  orthography  inscribed  it  "P.  Funel." 
Peter's  pen  portrait  a  contemporary  diarist  thus 
limned:  "a  fat,  brown,  squat  man,  and  lame", 
with  a  shortened  hip  from  childhood.  The  same 
diarist  recorded  that  the  writer  had  heard  "he 
had  done  more  charitable  deeds  than  any  man 
y*  lived  in  the  Town." 

The  rebuilder  of  the  Hall  after  the  fire  of  1762 
was  the  Town,  aided  by  a  lottery  authorized  by 
the  Province.  The  new  house  was  dedicated  by 
James  Otis,  the  patriot  orator,  he  of  the  "tongue 
of  flame",  to  the  "cause  of  liberty",  and  this  was 
the  origin  of  its  popular  title  of  the  "Cradle  of 
Liberty."  The  first  Hall  had  also  been  dedicated 
to  liberty  by  Faneuil's  eulogist,  John  Lovell, 
master  of  the  Latin  School,  but  this  was  quali- 
fied—  "with  loyalty  to  a  king  under  whom  we 
enjoy  that  liberty."  Had  Faneuil  lived,  he  might 
not  have  been  so  well  disposed  toward  the  second 
house,  for  the  Town  meetings  were  now  growing 
hot,  and  his  associates  were  of  the  Royalist  party. 

[54] 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

It  was  his  friend,  Thomas  Hutchinson,  with  the 
Revolution  to  become  an  exile,  that  moved  the 
naming  of  the  original  Hall  for  him.  Master 
Lovell,  his  eulogist,  went  off  with  the  British  to 
Halifax.  Several  of  Faneuil's  relatives  also  became 
refugees.  A  full-length  portrait  of  him,  which  the 
grateful  Town  ordered  painted  and  hung  on  the  wall 
of  the  Hall,  disappeared  with  the  Siege.  And  the 
Faneuil  mansion-house,  which  by  1772  had  come 
into  the  possession  of  a  Royalist — that  Colonel  John 
Vassall,  of  Cambridge,  whose  mansion-house  there 
became  Washington's  headquarters  and  the  after-day 
home  of  Longfellow  —  was  confiscated. 

Faneuil  Hall  was  built  on  Town  land,  reclaimed 
from  the  tide,  and  when  erected  stood  on  the 
edge  of  the  Town  Dock  and  back  of  Dock  Square. 
Over  the  dock  in  front  of  it  a  swing,  or  "turn- 
ing," bridge  connected  Merchants  Row  from  King 
Street  with  "Roebuck's  Passage"  to  North  Street, 
and  so  to  the  North  End.  Roebuck's,  where  now 
is  the  north  part  of  Merchants  Row,  was  a  lane 
so  narrow,  only  a  cart's  width,  that  teamsters 
were  wont  to  toss  up  a  coin  to  settle  which  should 
back  out  for  the  other,  —  or  sometimes  to  tarry 
and    argue   the   matter   over   their   grog   in    Roe- 

[  55] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

buck's  Tavern,  which  gave  the  passage  its  name. 
The  dock  remained  open  till  after  the  Revolution, 
when  a  portion  of  the  upper  part  was  filled  in; 
but  it  continued  to  Dome  up  tc  near  the  Hall  till 
the  Town  had  become  the  City.  Then,  in  1S24, 
the  hrs:  Mayor  Quincy  originated  a  scheme  of 
improvement  in  this  neighborhood,  and  in  a  little 
more  than  two  years  he  had  carried  it  through, 
arai:;s:  the  rersisre:;:  ::::f::::::  c:  his  municipal 
^ss::ia:e5.  whose  breaths  its  stnpendonsness  quite 
took  away.  Thus  where  the  dock  had  been,  rose 
the  long,  architecturally  fine,  granite  Quincy 
Market  House.  Also  were  opened  six  new  streets, 
a  seventh  was  greatly  enlarged,  and  flats,  docks, 
and  wharf  rights  were  obtained  to  a  large  extent. 
And  what  was  more  remarkable,  as  civic  enter- 
prises go,  this  energetic,  large-visioned  Bostonian 
had  the  satisfaction  of  recording  that  all  had 
been  "accomplished  in  the  center  of  a  populous 
:::;•  not  only  without  any  tax,  debt,  or  burden  uj  :  n 
its  pecuniar}"  resources,  but  with  large  rermanent 
additions  to  its  real  and  productive  property." 
So  Qnincy's  name  was  added  next  to  Faneuil's 
in  rhe  list  of  Boston's  benefactors. 

Dock  Square  behind  Faneuil  Hall  became  early 

[  5$] 


Old  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall 

a  market  center.  Here  was  the  Saturday  night 
meat  market  of  Colony  days  to  which  customers 
were  summoned  by  the  cheerful  clanging  of  a  bell. 
In  neighboring  Corn  Court  was  the  colonial  corn 
market.  A  few  years  before  the  erection  of 
Faneuil's  gift,  the  Town  instituted  a  system  of 
general  market-houses,  setting  up  three  small 
establishments,  the  central  one  in  this  square,  the 
other  two  at  the  then  South  End,  bounded  by  our 
Boylston  Street,  and  the  North  End,  in  North 
Square,  respectively.  At  that  time  the  townsfolk 
were  sharply  divided  on  the  burning  issue  of 
markets  at  fixed  points  versus  itinerant  service, 
and  in  or  about  1737  the  central  structure  was 
pulled  down  by  a  mob  "disguised  like  clergymen." 
It  was  after  this  performance,  and  when  popular 
sentiment  appeared  to  be  drifting  toward  the 
fixed  system,  that  Faneuil  made  his  generous 
offer  to  build  a  suitable  market-house  on  the 
Town's  land  at  his  own  cost,  on  condition  that  the 
citizens  legalize  it  and  maintain  it  under  proper 
regulations.  But  while  the  Town  gave  him  an 
unanimous  vote  of  thanks,  the  offer  itself  was  dis- 
cussed at  an  all-day  town  meeting,  and  finally 
accepted    by    the    narrow    margin    of    only    seven 

[57] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

votes.  That  Faneuil's  scheme  originally  con- 
templated a  market-house  solely,  and  the  addi- 
tion of  a  town-hall  was  an  after  suggestion  of 
others,  which  was  no  sooner  made  than  was 
cheerfully  adopted  by  him,  was  greatly  to  his 
credit.  And  the  unkind  tradition  that  when  the 
building  was  finished  and  the  cost  summed  up, 
" Peter  scolded  a  little",  does  not  detract  from 
the  merit  of  his  beneficence. 

The  present  bow-shaped  Cornhill,  picturesque 
with  old  shops  and  buildings,  one  or  two  re- 
constructed in  colonial  style,  is  an  early  nine- 
teenth-century thoroughfare,  primarily  cut  through 
to  connect  Court  and  Tremont  streets  more 
directly  with  Faneuil  Hall  and  its  market.  Its 
projectors  called  it  Cheapside,  after  London's. 
In  a  little  while,  however,  it  took  on  the  name 
of  Market  Street.  Then  a  few  years  after  the 
old  Cornhill  had  disappeared  with  Marlborough, 
Newbury,  and  Orange,  into  Washington  Street, 
it  assumed  the  discarded,  beloved  name  of  the 
first  link  of  the  first  High  Waye  through  the 
Town.  Early  in  its  career  it  became  a  favorite 
place  of  booksellers'  shops;  and  the  old  bookstore 
flavor  hangs  by  it  still. 

[  58] 


Ill 


COPP'S  HILL  AND  OLD  NORTH  (CHRIST)  CHURCH 

REGION 

THE  North  End  earliest  became  the  most 
populous  part  of  the  Town  as  well  as  the 
first  seat  of  Boston  gentility,  and  about  it  longest 
clung  the  distinctive  Old  Boston  flavor.  This 
flavor  remained,  indeed,  well  into  the  nineteenth 
century,  long  after  its  transformation  into  the 
foreign  quarter  it  now  essentially  is,  a  little  Italy 
and  a  good-sized  Ghetto,  with  splashes  of  Greece, 
Poland,  and  Russia.  Mellow  old  Bostonians  of 
to-day  remember  it  as  the  fascinating  quarter  of 
the  City  down  to  the  eighteen  sixties,  still  re- 
taining, intermixed  with  alien  innovations,  a  faded, 
shabby-genteel  aspect  and  delightsome  Old  Boston 
characteristics  in  its  native  residents  and  in  its 
architecture.  And  there  are  a  few  venerable  folk 
yet  remaining  who  can  recall  its  appearance  in 
the  thirties  as  Colonel  Henry  Lee,  that  rare 
Boston  personage  of  yesterday,  has  so  charmingly 
pictured    for    us, — &    "region    of    old    shops,    old 

[59] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

taverns,  old  dwellings,  old  meeting-houses,  old 
shipyards,  old  traditions,  quaint,  historical,  ro- 
mantic ";>its  narrow  streets  and  narrower  alleys 
"lined  with  old  shops  and  old  houses  some  of 
colonial  date,  with  their  many  gables,  their  over- 
hanging upper  stories,  their  huge  paneled  chim- 
neys, interspersed  with  aristocratic  mansions  of 
greater  height  and  pretensions,  flanked  with  out- 
buildings and  surrounded  by  gardens";  clustered 
around  the  base  of  Copp's  Hill,  "the  old  ship- 
yards associated  with  the  invincible  'Old  Iron- 
sides' and  a  series  of  argosies  of  earlier  or  later 
dates,  that  had  plied  every  sea  on  peaceful  or 
warlike  errands  for  two  hundred  years.  The  sound 
of  the  mallets  and  the  hand  axes  were  still  to 
be  heard;  the  smell  of  tar  regaled  the  senses; 
you  could  chat  with  caulkers,  riggers,  and  spar 
makers,  and  other  web-footed  brethren  who  had 
worked  upon  these  'pageants  of  the  sea',  and 
you  could  upon  occasion  witness  the  launch  of 
these  graceful  wonderful  masterpieces  of  their 
skill." 

The  old-time  charm  the  foreign  occupation  has 
not  altogether  effaced.  There  still  remain  the 
narrow  streets   and  narrower  alleys,   and  most  of 

[60] 


Copp's  Hill  and  Old  North  Church 

them  have  been  permitted  to  retain  their  colonial 
or  provincial  names,  as  Salutation,  Sun,  Moon, 
Chair,  Snowhill.  Under  the  foreign  veneer  we 
may  find  a  remnant  of  a  colonial  or  provincial 
landmark;  or,  plastered  with  foreign  signs,  the 
battered  front  of  some  provincial  worthy's  dwell- 
ing. 

Copp's  Hill,  reduced  in  height  and  circum- 
ference and  shorn  of  its  spurs,  is  reserved  by  the 
protected  burying-ground  that  crowns  it.  This 
ancient  burying-ground,  Christ  Church  at  its  foot, 
and  the  "Paul  Revere  house"  in  neighboring 
North  Square,  constitute  the  three  and  only  lures 
of  the  conventional  " Seeing  Boston"  tourist  to 
this  dingy  part  of  the  modern  city.  The  lads  of 
Little  Italy  who  swarm  about  the  stranger  as 
he  mounts  the  gentle  incline  of  Hull  Street  and 
offer  themselves  "for  a  nickel"  as  guides,  can 
tell  you  more,  or  much  with  more  accuracy,  of 
the  show  points  of  the  locality,  than  the  native 
born,  for  they  have  been  well  tutored  by  the 
school  mistresses  of  the  neighborhood  schools, 
and  are  marvelously  quick  in  absorbing  things 
American. 

Though   less   "dollied   up"   than   the  other   two 

[61  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

historic  graveyards  —  the  King's  Chapel  and  the 
Granary,  in  the  heart  of  the  city  —  this  enclosure 
is  quainter.  It  is  made  up  of  three  or  four  bury- 
ing-grounds  of  different  periods,  intermingled  and 
appearing  as  one.  The  oldest,  which  most  in- 
terests us,  is  the  northeasterly  part  bounded  by 
Charter  and  Snowhill  streets,  back  from  the  Hull- 
street  entrance.  It  dates  from  1660,  which  makes 
it  in  point  of  age  next  to  the  King's  Chapel 
ground,  the  oldest  of  the  three,  with  the  Granary 
ground  a  close  third,  that  dating  also  from  1660 
but  a  few  months  later  than  this.  The  part  near 
Snowhill  Street  was  reserved  for  the  burial  of 
slaves.  In  other  parts  are  found  numerous  graves 
and  tombs  having  monumental  stones  or  slabs 
with  armorial  devices  handsomely  cut  upon  them; 
and  some  with  quaint  epitaphs.  But  in  this,  as  in 
the  other  historic  grounds,  the  stones  in  many 
instances  do  not  mark  the  graves,  for  here  and 
there  in  the  laying  out  of  paths  stones  were 
shuffled  about  remorselessly.  And  many  graves 
are  hopelessly  lost,  for  in  the  dark  days  of  the 
neglect  of  the  place,  stones  were  filched  from  their 
rightful  places  and  utilized  in  the  construction 
of  chimneys  on  near-by  houses,  in  building  drains, 

[62] 


Copp's  Hill  Burying  Ground. 


i&^&y* 


..Nv->  -■' 


Copfts  Hill  and  Old  North  Church 

and  even  for  doorsteps.  Others  were  pulled  up 
and  employed  in  closing  old  tombs  in  place  of 
rotted  coverings  of  plank.  There  are  also  cases 
of  changed  dates,  as  1690  to  1620,  and  1695-6  to 
1625-6,  more  than  five  years  before  Boston  was 
begun.  These  ingenious  tricks  were  attributed 
to  bad  North  End  boys.  A  latter-day  honest 
superintendent  succeeded,  through  painstaking  re- 
search, in  recovering  quite  a  number  of  the 
filched  stones,  and  reset  them  in  the  ground,  but 
with  no  relation  to  the  graves  they  originally 
marked,  for  that  was  impossible. 

Popular  historic  features  of  the  hill  other  than 
the  burying-ground  concern  the  Revolution. 
Young  America  loves  to  point  to  the  site  of  the 
redoubt  which  the  Britishers  threw  up  at  the 
Siege,  whence  Burgoyne  directed  the  fire  of  the 
battery  during  the  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  and 
whence  were  shot  the  shells  that  set  Charlestown 
ablaze.  This  work  was  in  the  southwest  corner 
of  the  burying-ground.  Then  the  summit  was  con- 
siderably higher  than  now,  and  the  side  of  the 
hill  fronting  Charlestown  was  abrupt.  The  Amer- 
ican schoolboy  will  tell  you,  too,  how  the  British 
soldiers,   during  the  Siege,   amused  themselves   by 

[65  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

making  targets  of  the  gravestones  in  the  old 
burying-ground;  and  how  the  tablet  on  the  tomb 
of  Captain  Daniel  Malcom,  merchant,  boldly 
inscribed  "A  true  Son  of  Liberty,  a  Friend  of  the 
Publick,  an  enemy  to  Oppression,  and  one  of  the 
foremost  in  Opposing  the  Revenue  Acts  in 
America",  was  the  most  peppered  with  their 
bullets,  and  bears  the  marks  of  them  to  this  day. 
In  provincial  times  the  hill  was  a  favorite  resort 
of  the  North  Enders  for  celebrating  holidays  or 
momentous  events.  Tradition  tells  of  monstrous 
bonfires  on  the  summit  on  occasions  of  the  receipt 
of  great  news.  That  in  celebration  of  the  sur- 
render of  Quebec,  when  "forty-five  tar  barrels, 
two  cords  of  wood,  a  mast,  spar,  and  boards, 
with  fifty  pounds  of  powder"  were  set  off,  must 
have  been  the  grandest  of  its  kind  in  Boston's 
history.  At  the  same  time  a  bonfire  of  smaller 
proportions,  yet  big,  was  made  on  Fort  Hill.  It 
is  related  that  on  this  gloriously  festive  occasion 
there  were  provided,  at  the  cost  of  the  Province, 
as  were  the  bonfires,  "thirty-two  gallons  of  rum 
and  much  beer."  After  the  Revolution,  on  the 
seventeenth  of  June,  1786,  when  the  Charles 
River  bridge,   the   first   bridge   to    be    built  from 

[66] 


Copfts  Hill  and  Old  North  Church 

the  Town  to  the  mainland,  was  opened,  guns  were 
fired  from  where  the  British  redoubt  had  been, 
simultaneously  with  the  guns  from  Bunker  Hill, 
while  the  chimes  of  Christ  Church  joined  in  a 
merry  peal. 

Christ  Church,  dating  from  1723,  the  second 
Church  of  England  establishment  in  Boston,  and 
the  oldest  church  now  standing  in  the  city,  we 
see  newly  and  faithfully  restored  to  its  original 
appearance,  its  parish  house  refurbished,  the 
churchyard  brushed  up  and  lined  with  fresh  young 
poplars,  and  the  whole  under  the  protecting  wing 
of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Bishop  of  Massa- 
chusetts. As  a  landmark  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land in  Puritan  Boston,  it  is  interesting  to  the 
churchman.  But  as  a  rare  example  of  the  so-called 
New  England  classic  in  architecture,  it  has  a  wider 
interest.  In  general  outlines  it  follows  Sir  Chris- 
topher Wren's  St.  Anne's,  Blackfriars.  A  sub- 
stantial body  of  brick,  with  side  walls  of  stone 
two  and  a  half  feet  thick,  and  the  belfry-tower 
with  walls  a  foot  thicker,  the  structure  surely 
gave  warrant  for  the  hope  expressed  in  the 
prayer  of  the  Reverend  Samuel  Myles,  the  devout 
rector    of    King's    Chapel,    at    the    laying    of    the 

[67] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

corner-stone:  "May  the  gates  of  Hell  never  pre- 
vail against  it."  The  original  spire  surmounting 
the  tower,  attributed  to  William  Price,  was  blown 
down  in  an  October  gale  in  1802,  but  the  present 
one,  built  in  1807,  from  a  model  by  Bulflnch,  is 
said  to  be  a  faithful  reproduction  of  it  in  pro- 
portions and  symmetry.  The  tower  chimes,  com- 
prising eight  sweet-toned  bells,  still  the  most 
melodious  in  the  city,  were  hung  in  1744,  and  were 
the  first  peal  brought  to  the  country,  from  Eng- 
land, as  the  inscription  on  one  of  them  states  — 
"we  are  the  first  ring  of  Bells  cast  for  the  British 
Empire  in  North  America,  A.  R.,  1744."  Each 
bell  tells  its  own  story,  or  records  a  date  of  the 
church,  or  a  sentiment,  inscribed  around  its 
crown.  They  were  bought  by  subscription  of  the 
wealthy  parishioners.  A  few  years  after  their 
installation,  a  guild  of  eight  bell-ringers,  all  young 
men,  was  formed,  one  of  whom  is  said  to  have 
been  Paul  Revere.  The  tablet  on  the  tower  front 
relates  the  story  that  Revere's  signal  lanterns 
that  "warned  the  country  of  the  march  of  the 
British  troops  to  Lexington  and  Concord",  were 
"displayed  in  the  steeple  of  this  church  April 
18,    1775";  and   the   story   is    firmly  fixed    in   the 

[68] 


Christ  Church, 


Copfs  Hill  and  Old  North  Church 

official  guide  to  the  church;  yet  there  are  those 
who  question  the  statement,  and  as  firmly  fix  in 
history  the  place  of  the  lights  to  be  the  belfry 
or  steeple  of  the  genuine  "Old  North"  Church  — 
the  meeting-house  that  stood  in  North  Square  till 
the  Siege,  when  it  was  pulled  down  by  the  British 
soldiers  and  used  for  firewood. 

In  the  restored  interior  we  find  in  place  all 
the  choice  relics  that  embellished  the  provincial 
church,  and  of  which  the  guide-books  tell:  the 
brass  chandeliers,  spoil  of  a  privateersman;  the 
statuettes  in  front  of  the  organ,  intended  for  a 
Canadian  convent  and  captured  by  a  Boston- 
owned  privateer  from  a  French  ship  during  the 
French  and  Indian  War  of  1746,  and  presented  by 
the  privateer's  commander,  a  parishioner;  the 
"Vinegar"  Bible,  and  the  prayer-books  bearing 
the  royal  arms,  given  by  George  II  in  1733.  And 
among  the  mural  ornaments,  —  the  bust  of  Wash- 
ington said  to  have  been  modeled  from  a  plaster 
bust  made  in  Boston  in  1790,  and  the  first  memo- 
rial of  Washington  set  up  in  a  public  place. 
Beneath  the  church  and  the  tower  are  many 
tombs.  In  one  of  these  was  temporarily  buried 
Major   Pitcairn   of   the   British   Marines,    he   who 

[71  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

led  the  advance  guard  at  Lexington  and  Concord 
with  that  cry,  "Disperse,  ye  Rebels!"  which 
brought  upon  that  amiable  gentleman-soldier, 
beloved  of  his  men,  the  odium  of  the  Americans, 
and  who  fell  mortally  wounded  at  Bunker  Hill. 
The  gruesome  tale  is  told  that  when  his  relatives 
in  England  sent  for  his  remains,  and  his  monument 
was  placed  in  Westminster  Abbey,  the  perplexed 
sexton,  unable  to  identify  them,  substituted  an- 
other body,  that  of  a  British  lieutenant  who  had 
resembled  him  in  figure  and  height,  which  was 
duly  forwarded  as  Major  Pitcairn's. 

From  the  belfry  of  Christ  Church,  Gage  wit- 
nessed the  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill.  From  the  same 
point  of  view  the  Artist  makes  a  picture  of  Bunker 
Hill  Monument  of  to-day  for  our  English  guest. 

In  North  Square  we  are  in  the  once  fair  center 
of  provincial  elegance  completely  metamorphosed. 
Save  the  colonial  touch  in  the  little  old  Paul 
Revere  house,  with  projecting  second  story,  and 
the  colonial  names  of  the  diverging  ways  —  Moon, 
Sun  Court  and  Garden  Court  streets — all  semblance 
of  Oldest  Boston  is  stamped  out.  Antiquary  can 
only  indicate  the  spots  where  "here  stood"; 
imagination  must  do  the  rest. 

[72] 


Copft s  Hill  and  Old  North  Church 

We  remarked  the  Revere  house  as  worth  more 
than  a  passing  glance  merely  as  the  dwelling-place 
of  Longfellow's  hero  of  the  Revolution.  It  was 
old  when  Revere  bought  it  in  1770,  for  it  was 
built  after  the  "great  fire"  of  November,  1676, — 
the  sixth  "great  fire"  in  the  Puritan  Town,  — 
and,  moreover,  it  replaces  the  house  of  Increase 
Mather,  the  parsonage  of  the  First  North  Church, 
which  went  down  with  the  meeting-house  and 
nearly  fifty  other  dwelling-houses,  in  that  disaster. 
Revere  moved  here  from  Fish  Street  (Ann,  now 
North)  perhaps  before  1770,  and  it  was  his  home 
from  that  time  till  1800,  when,  having  prospered 
in  his  cannon  and  bell  foundry,  he  bought  a 
grander  house  on  neighboring  Charter  Street,  by 
Revere  Place,  where  he  spent  the  remainder  of  his 
days,  and  died  in  18 18.  His  foundry,  which  he 
established  after  the  peace,  was  near  the  foot  of 
Foster  Street,  not  far  from  his  Charter  Street 
house. 

It  was  in  the  upper  windows  of  this  little,  low- 
browed, North  Square  house  that  Revere  dis- 
played those  awful  illuminated  pictures  upon 
the  evening  of  the  first  anniversary  of  the  "Boston 
Massacre",    which     as    we    read    in    the    Boston 

[73 1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

Gazette  of  that  week,  struck  the  assemblage 
drawn  hither  with  "solemn  silence"  while  "their 
countenances  were  covered  with  a  melancholy- 
gloom."  And  well  might  they  have  shuddered. 
In  the  middle  window  appeared  a  realistic  view  of 
the  "Massacre."  The  north  window  held  the 
"Genius  of  Liberty,"  a  sitting  figure,  holding 
aloft  a  liberty  cap,  and  trampling  under  foot  a 
soldier  hugging  a  serpent,  the  emblem  of  mili- 
tary tyranny.  In  the  south  window  an  obelisk 
displaying  the  names  of  the  five  victims  stood 
behind  a  bust  of  the  boy,  Snyder,  who  was  killed 
a  few  days  before  the  affair  by  a  Tory  "informer" 
in  the  struggle  with  a  crowd  before  a  shop, 
"marked"  secretly  as  a  Tory  shop  to  be  boy- 
cotted; and  in  the  background,  a  shadowy,  gory 
figure,  beneath  which  was  this  couplet:  "Snider's 
pale  ghost  fresh  bleeding  stands,  And  Vengeance 
for  his  death  demands!"  Revere  was  indeed 
a  stalwart  patriot,  but  he  was  no  artist,  and  the 
execution  of  these  presentations  may  have  con- 
tributed no  small  part  to  the  gloom  of  the  popu- 
lace contemplating  them. 

We    pointed    out    the    site    of    the    first    North 
Church  and  its  successor,  built  upon  its  ruins  the 

[74] 


Copft s  Hill  and  Old  North  Church 

year  after  the  fire,  which  became  the  Old  North 
—  at  the  head  of  the  square  between  Garden 
Court  and  Moon  Streets.  Nothing  is  preserved  to 
us  in  picture  or  adequate  description  of  either  of 
these  meeting-houses  of  the  Second  Church  of 
Boston,  which  was  formed  in  1649,  and  for  more 
than  three-quarters  of  a  century,  from  1664,  the 
pulpit  of  the  famous  Mathers  — Increase;  Cotton, 
son  of  Increase;  and  Samuel,  son  of  Cotton.  Al- 
though the  house  of  1677  was  close  upon  a  century 
old  at  the  Revolution,  it  is  said  to  have  been  still 
a  fairly  rugged  building,  and  its  destruction  by 
the  British  soldiers  for  fuel  during  that  cold 
winter  of  the  Siege  is  called  wanton  by  the  his- 
torians. The  Church  remained  homeless,  though 
not  dispersed,  from  the  beginning  of  the  Siege  to 
1779,  when  it  acquired  a  meeting-house  on 
Hanover  Street  near  by. 

Increase  Mather,  after  the  burning  of  his  house 
in  the  fire  of  1676,  built  on  Hanover  Street,  just 
below  Bennett  Street,  and  a  remnant  of  this 
house,  number  350,  we  may  yet  see,  covered  with 
foreign  signs.  Cotton  Mather  passed  a  part  of  his 
boyhood  in  the  Hanover  Street  house.  After  he 
became    the    minister    of    the    North    Church,    he 

[75] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

bought  a  brick  mansion-house  hard  by,  also  on 
Hanover  Street,  which  the  first  minister  of  the 
North  Church,  John  Mayo,  had  occupied.  Samuel 
Mather's  house  was  on  Moon  Street.  The  tomb 
of  the  Mathers  we  saw  in  Copp's  Hill  Burying- 
ground.  North  Square  was  a  military  rendezvous 
during  the  Siege.  Barracks  were  here,  and  the 
fine  houses  in  the  neighborhood  were  used  as 
quarters  for  the  officers.  Major  Pitcairn  was  oc- 
cupying the  Robert  Shaw  mansion,  which  stood 
opposite  Revere's  little  house,  when  he  went  to 
his  fate  at  Breed's  Hill. 

In  Garden  Court  Street  we  pointed  to  the  sites  of 
two  of  those  aristocratic  mansions  of  which  Colonel 
Lee  spoke,  in  height  and  pretension  overtopping 
their  neighbors.  These  were  the  Hutchinson  and 
the  Clark-Frankland  mansions,  stateliest  of  their 
day,  which  have  figured  in  romance  and  story. 
They  formed,  with  their  courtyards  and  gardens, 
the  west  side  of  the  court.  The  Hutchinson's 
garden  back  of  the  house  extended  to  Hanover 
and  Fleet  Streets. 

The  Hutchinson  mansion  was  built  in  1710  for 
the  opulent  merchant,  Thomas  Hutchinson,  father 
of  the  more  eminent  Thomas  Hutchinson,  historian, 

[76} 


Bunker  Hill  Monument  from   the   Belfry  of  Christ 
Church. 


v- 


• 


Copft  s  Hill  and  Old  North  Church 

chief  justice,  royal  governor;  the  Clark-Frankland 
followed  two  or  three  years  after,  built  for  William 
Clark,  as  rich  a  merchant  as  Hutchinson,  and 
somewhat  grander  to  outvie  his  neighbor.  Clark 
died  in  1742  and  was  buried  in  a  grand  sculp- 
tured vault  in  Copp's  Hill  Burying-ground,  which 
some  years  after  was  taken  possession  of  by  a 
lawless  sexton  who  caused  his  own  name  to  be 
inscribed  above  the  merchant's;  and  when  he 
came  to  die  his  humbler  remains  were  deposited 
in  the  merchant's  place. 

The  Clark-Frankland  mansion  acquired  its  hy- 
phenated title  after  Clark's  day,  with  its  purchase 
in  1756  by  Sir  Harry  Frankland,  gallant  and  fa- 
vored, great-grandson  of  Frances  Cromwell,  daugh- 
ter of  the  Protector,  who  chose  to  be  collector  of 
Boston  rather  than  governor  of  the  Province 
when  George  II  offered  him  his  choice,  and  who 
became  the  lover  of  lovely  Agnes  Surriage,  maid 
of  the  Fountain  Inn  in  old  Marblehead,  the 
heroine  of  Holmes'  ballad  and  Bynner's  novel. 
Here  Sir  Harry  brought  the  beautiful  girl,  now 
his  wife,  and  the  handsome  pair  richly  entertained 
the  gentry  of  the  Town,  with  the  assistance  of 
Thomas,    the    French    cook,    mention    of    whose 

[79] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

hiring  at  fifteen  dollars  a  month  Sir  Harry  makes 
in  his  diary.  They  lived  here  but  one  short  year, 
when  Sir  Harry  was  transferred  to  Lisbon,  this 
time  as  consul.  After  his  death,  in  England,  in 
1768,  the  Lady  Agnes  returned  to  Boston  and  to 
this  mansion,  and  remained  till  the  outbreak  of 
the  Revolution.  The  story  of  the  gallant  cour- 
tesies that  attended  her  leaving  the  Town  at  the 
Siege  is  one  of  the  prettiest  of  the  incidents  of 
that  troublous  time.  After  the  Siege,  she  went 
back  to  England,  and  presently  married  a  country 
banker  and  lived  serenely  ever  after,  till  her  death 
in  1783. 

The  Hutchinson  mansion  was  the  birthplace  of 
Thomas  Hutchinson,  2d,  and  here,  and  at  his 
country-seat  in  the  beautiful  suburb  of  Milton, 
he  lived  through  his  whole  career,  till  his  departure 
to  England  in  June,  1775,  before  the  Battle  of 
Bunker  Hill,  to  report  to  the  king  the  state  of 
affairs  in  Boston,  never  to  return,  but  to  die  there 
in  exile  yearning  for  his  old  home.  That  he  meant 
to  be  true  to  Boston,  to  which  he  was  devotedly 
attached,  is  now  beyond  question.  In  this  Garden 
Court  house,  Hutchinson  wrote  his  "History  of 
Massachusetts,"     and     when     the     mansion     was 

[  80] 


Copfts  Hill  and  Old  North  Church 

wickedly  sacked  by  the  anti-Stamp  Act  mob,  on 
an  August  night  of  1765,  his  priceless  manu- 
scripts were  scattered  about  the  court  with  his 
fine  books  and  other  treasures;  but,  happily,  a 
neighbor  gathered  them  up,  and  so  they  were 
saved.  The  two  mansions  lingered  till  1833,  when 
the  widening  of  Bell  Alley  as  an  extension  of 
Prince  Street  swept  them  away.  Colonel  Lee 
remembered  them  in  their  picturesque  decadence 
festooned  with  Virginia  creeper. 

Returning  from  the  North  End  by  way  of 
Hanover  Street,  we  make  a  detour  through  short, 
winding  Marshall  Lane  —  the  sign  foolishly  says 
Street  —  which  issues  on  Union  Street,  and  was 
originally  a  short  cut  from  Union  Street  to  the 
Mill  Creek  which  connected  the  North,  or  Mill, 
Cove,  with  the  Great  Cove.  Here,  set  into  the 
corner  building  above  the  sidewalk,  we  come  upon 
the  "Boston  Stone,  1737",  a  familiar  provincial 
landmark.  It  is  the  remnant,  we  explain,  of  a 
paint  mill  brought  out  from  England  about  the 
year  1700  and  used  by  a  painter  who  had  his 
shop  here.  The  round  stone  was  the  grinder. 
The  monument  was  placed  after  the  painter's 
day,   in  imitation  of  the  London  Stone,  to  serve 

[81  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

as  a  direction  for  shops  in  the  neighborhood. 
The  painter's  shop  was  known  as  the  "Painter's 
Arms"  from  his  carved  sign  fashioned  after  the 
arms  of  the  Painter's  Guild  in  London,  and  still 
preserved  as  an  ornament,  set  in  the  Hanover 
Street  face  of  the  corner  building,  on  the  site  of 
the  shop.  A  similar  guide  post,  called  the 
"Union  Stone",  was  at  a  later  day  placed  at  the 
Union-street  entrance  of  the  lane,  before  the  low, 
brick,  pitch-roofed,  little  eighteenth-century  build- 
ing we  see  yet  lingering  on  the  upper  corner  here. 
This  house  was  in  latter  provincial  times  Hope- 
still  Capen's  fashionable  dry  goods  shop,  in  which, 
in  his  handsome  youth,  Benjamin  Thompson  of 
Woburn,  later  to  become  the  famous  Count 
Rumford,  and  named  with  Benjamin  Franklin  as 
"the  most  distinguished  for  philosophical  genius 
that  this  country  had  produced",  was  an  ap- 
prenticed clerk  quite  popular  with  the  lady  cus- 
tomers. 

Turning  into  Union  Street,  and  so  to  Hanover 
Street  again,  we  pass  the  site,  somewhere  in  the 
street-way  at  this  junction,  of  the  dwelling  and 
chandlery  shop  of  Josiah  Franklin,  Benjamin 
Franklin's   father,   at   the   sign   of   the   Blue   Ball, 

[8a] 


The  Paul  Revere  House ',  North  Square, 


■ 


Copft s  Hill  and  Old  North  Church 

where  Benjamin  spent  his  boyhood.  The  land- 
mark remained  till  the  late  eighteen  fifties,  when 
it  disappeared  with  a  widening  of  Hanover  Street. 
But  the  Blue  Ball  still  remains,  an  honored  relic 
in  the  Bostonian  Society's  collection  in  the  Old 
State  House.  On  Union  Street,  across  Hanover, 
where  is  a  tunnel  station,  we  have  the  site  of  a 
famous  Revolutionary  landmark  —  the  Green 
Dragon  Tavern,  headquarters  of  the  patriot 
leaders;  where  the  "Tea  Party"  was  organized; 
where  later  met  the  North  End  Caucus,  chief  of  the 
political  clubs  that  gave  the  name  caucus  to 
our  American  political  nomenclature;  the  rendez- 
vous of  the  night  patrol  of  Boston  mechanics 
instituted  to  watch  upon  British  and  Tory  move- 
ments before  Lexington  and  Concord.  The 
Green  Dragon  was  also  the  first  home  of  the 
Freemasons,  when,  in  1752,  the  pioneer  St. 
Andrew  Lodge  was  organized,  and,  in  1769,  the 
first  Grand  Lodge  of  the  Province,  with  Joseph 
Warren  —  the  Warren  who  fell  at  Bunker  Hill  — 
as  master. 


[85] 


IV 

THE  COMMON  AND  ROUND  ABOUT 

T^OR  their  domestic  amusement,  every  after- 
JL  noon  after  drinking  tea,  the  gentlemen  and 
ladies  walk  the  Mall  and  from  thence  adjourn  to 
one  another's  houses  to  spend  the  evening  —  those 
that  are  not  disposed  to  attend  the  evening  lec- 
ture, which  they  may  do,  if  they  please,  six 
nights  in  seven  the  year  round.  What  they^\ 
call  the  Mall  is  a  walk  on  a  fine  green  Common' 
adjoining  to  the  southwest  side  of  the  Town.  It 
is  near  half  a  mile  over,  with  two  rows  of  young 
trees  planted  opposite  to  each  other,  with  a  fine 
footway  between  in  imitation  of  St.  James's  Park; 
and  part  of  the  bay  of  the  sea  which  encircles 
the  Town,  taking  its  course  along  the  northwest 
side  of  the  Common  —  by  which  it  is  bounded 
on  the  one  side,  and  by  the  country  on  the  other 
—  forms  a  beautiful  canal  in  view  of  the  walk."  -** 
This  dainty  picture  of  the  early  eighteenth- 
century  Common,  and  the  earliest  picture  we  have 

[87] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

of  Boston  Common  in  any  detail,  was  recalled 
as  we  three  sauntered  on  to  the  beautiful  preserve 
of  to-day  of  nearly  fifty  acres  in  the  heart  of  the 
city,  entering  from  the  busy  Tremont  and  Park 
streets  corner  amidst  the  throngs  in  continuous 
passage  to  and  from  the  Subway  stations.  It  is 
the  Englishman  Bennett's  picture,  our  English 
visitor  was  told,  of  Boston  Common  as  he  saw  it, 
presumably  about  the  year  1740.  The  Mall  he 
portrays  so  engagingly  as  the  Town's  social 
promenade,  is  the  Mall  alongside  Tremont  Street. 
When  Bennett  wrote,  this  was  the  only  Mall,  as 
it  had  been  in  Colony  days,  when  the  visiting 
Josselyn  pictured  the  rustics  with  their  "mar- 
malet-madams "  perambulating  the  Common  of 
evenings  "till  the  Nine  a  Clock  Bell  rings  them 
home  to  their  respective  habitations";  and  it  re- 
mained the  only  one  till  after  the  Revolution. 
West  of  it  the  whole  reserve  was  used  as  the 
military  training  field  and  pasturage  for  cattle, 
for  which  it  was  originally  set  apart  at  the  be- 
ginning of  Boston.  Or,  as  is  recorded  on  the 
handsomely  framed  tablet  we  observe  against  the 
Park  Street  fence  at  the  entrance,  with  the  pur- 
chase   of    the   whole    peninsula    in    1634,  save  his 

[  88] 


The  Common  and  Round  About 

home-lot  of  six  acres  on  Beacon  Hill,  from  the 
hospitable  Englishman,  Blaxton,  in  comfortable  pos- 
session here  when  the  colonists  arrived. 

The  Mall  in  Bennett's  time,  with  its  double  row 
of  young  elms,  was  finished  off  with  a  few  syca- 
mores at  the  northerly  end  and  poplars  at  the 
southerly  end,  all  set  out  only  a  few  years  before. 
Beyond  these,  save  one  solitary  elm  in  the  middle 
of  the  Common,  and  a  great  one,  —  for  there  are 
legends  of  the  hanging  of  witches,  if  not  of 
Quakers,  from  its  rugged  branches,  —  the  reserve 
was  treeless;  and  it  remained  practically  so  through 
the  Province  period.  A  picture  of  the  date  of 
1768  shows  the  "Great  Elm"  and  a  lonely  sapling 
far  out  in  the  open.  Until  a  few  years  before 
Bennett  saw  it,  the  Common  had  no  fences.  The 
front  fences,  set  up  in  1733-1734,  and  1737,  were 
railings  along  the  easterly  and  northerly  sides.  ^ 
These  were  the  fences  that  the  British  soldiers  I 
encamped  on  the  Common  used  for  their  camp-  ~* 
fires  during  the  Siege;  the  trees  were  saved  from  ij 
destruction  by  Howe's  orders,  at  the  earnest  R 
solicitation  of  the  selectmen,  and  especially  of  I 
John  Andrews,  who  lived  near  by,  an  act  for  which  ' 
the  Bostonians  were,  or  should  have  been,    grate- 

[89] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

ful.  An  inner  fence,  parallel  with  the  inner  row 
of  elms,  protected  the  Mall  from  the  grazing  field. 
From  the  outset  the  trees  on  the  Mall  were  care- 
fully guarded  by  the  townsfolk,  and  orders  were 
occasionally  passed  in  Town  meeting  whipping  up 
the  selectmen  to  protect  individual  trees  when 
threatened.  The  year  that  the  inner  row  on 
the  Mall  was  planted,  1734,  a  Town  meeting 
order  offered  a  reward  of  forty  shillings  to  the 
informer  against  any  persons  guilty  of  cutting 
down  or  despoiling  any  tree  then  here  or  that 
might  be  planted  in  the  future.  The  protection 
of  the  Common  from  injury  or  abuse  was  a  matter 
of  concern  in  the  earliest  times.  Orders  appeared 
in  the  sixteen  fifties  against  "annoying"  the 
Common  by  spreading  "trash",  or  laying  any 
carrion  or  other  "stinkeing  thing"  upon  it.  Thus 
we  see  a  wholesome  solicitude  for  the  Common, 
and  a  lively  sense  of  its  value  is  an  inheritance 
from  Old  Boston.  Yet  it  barely  escaped  ruin 
more  than  once  in  old  days.  In  its  very  first 
year  an  attempt  to  have  it  divided  up  in  allot- 
ments was  only  frustrated  through  the  action  of 
Governor  Winthrop  and  John  Cotton.  After  the 
Revolution,    the    disposal    of    a    considerable    part 

[90] 


The  Common  and  Round  About 


of  it  to  be  cut  up  into  lots  was  checked  by  the 
personal  exertion  of  that  John  Andrews  who  saved 
the  trees  during  the  Siege. 

The  fence  of  1734  on  tne  easterly  side  was  at 
first  provided  with  openings  opposite  the  streets 
and  lanes  entering  Tremont  —  then  Common 
—  Street,  "Blott's  Lane",  our  Winter  Street,  West 
Street,  and  "Hogg  Lane",  Avery  Street.  Very 
soon,  however,  these  openings  were  closed  up  by 
a  Town  meeting  order,  because  the  Common  had 
become  "much  broken  and  the  herbage  spoiled  by 
means  of  carts  &c.  passing  and  repassing  over  it," 
and  a  single  entrance  for  "carts,  coaches,  &c." 
out  of  Common  Street,  provided  at  the  northerly  _ 
side  where  is  Park  Street.  After  the  Revolution, 
in  1784,  when  great  improvements  in  various  parts 
of  the  Common  were  begun,  at  the  cost  of  a  fund 
subscribed  by  generous  townsmen  for  the  purpose, 
the  fences  were  restored,  and  a  third  row  of  elms 
was  planted  on  this  Mall.  But  the  larger  im- 
provements, the  laying  out  of  other  malls  and  of 
cross  paths,  and  systematic  tree-planting  in  the 
open,  giving  the  enclosure  a  more  general  park 
aspect,  were  all  after  the  second  decade  of  the  nine*' 
teenth  century.     The  spacious  Beacon  Street  Mall 

[91  ] 


<* 


J 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

was  the  first  of  the  new  esplanades,  laid  out  in 
1815-1816;  and  the  magnificent  breadth  and 
sweep  of  it,  greatly  to  the  credit  of  the  broad- 
visioned  designers  and  their  artistic  sense,  was  the 
model  for  the  others  that  followed.  VWKen  told" 
that  the  Beacon  Street  Mall  was  paid  for  from  a 
subscription  raised  in  18 14  for  the  purpose  of 
providing  for  the  defense  of  Boston  against  a 
contemplated  English  attack,  which  was  n't  made, 
in  the  War  of  1812,  our  Englishman  observed, 
with  a  twinkle  of  eye,  that  it  was  a  much  finer 
disposition  of  the  money.  The  Park  Street  and  the  I 
Charles  Street  Malls  followed  in  1 822-1 824,  the 
first  Mayor  Quincy's  time;  and  the  Boylston  Street  \ 
Mall  in  1836,  thus  completing  the  encircling  of 
the  Common  by  malls.  At  that  time  the  iron 
fence  was  placed,  and  parts  of  it  still  remain  on 
three  sides.  The  handsome  gates  forming  part 
of  this  extensive  structure  long  ago  disappeared, 
to  the  sorrow  of  many  citizens.  The  handsome 
Boylston  Street  Mall  was  destroyed  by  the  build- 
ing of  the  Subway  in  the  eighteen  nineties.  The 
Tremont  Street  Mall  was  also  sadly  despoiled  at 
the  same  time,  magnificent  English  elms  falling 
under    the    axe,    to    mournful    dirges    of    hosts  of 

[92] 


On  the  Com?non,  showing  Park  Street  Church. 


f 


The  Common  and  Round  About 

Bostonians.  And  after  the  completion  of  the 
Subway  beneath  it,  sapient  city  authorities  bereft 
the  Mall  of  its  old  distinctive  name  of  Tremont 
Street,  and,  in  a  burst  of  belated  patriotism, 
substituted  that  of  Lafayette;  because,  forsooth, 
that  well-beloved  Frenchman  passed  by  the  Mall 
along  Tremont  Street  with  the  escorting  proces- 
sion, upon  his  memorable  visit  in  1824. 

The  integrity  of  the  Common  rests  first,  on  the 
order  of  the  Town,  March  30,  1640,  declaring 
that  "henceforth"  no  land  within  the  reservation 
as  then  defined  be  granted  "eyther  for  house- 
plotts  or  garden  to  any  pson";  second,  on  an  order 
of  May  18,  1646,  prohibiting  the  gift,  sale,  or 
exchange  of  any  "common  marish  or  Pastur 
Ground"  without  consent  of  "ye  major  p*  of 
ye  inhabitants  of  ye  towne":  thus  preserving  the 
power  of  control  of  the  Common  with  the  legal 
voters;  and,  third,  on  a  section  of  the  city  charter 
reserving  the  Common  and  Faneuil  Hall  from 
lease  or  sale  by  the  city  council,  in  whose  hands 
the  care,  custody,  and  arrangement  of  the  city's 
property  were  placed.  The  title  is  in  the  deposi- 
tion of  the  four  "ancient  men",  in  1684,  the 
essence  of  which  is  the  inscription  on  the  tablet 

[95] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

at  the  Park  Street  entrance.  In  the  absence  of  a 
recorded  title,  if  any  were  given  by  Blaxton,  this 
deposition  was  obtained  after  the  annulment  of 
the  Colony  Charter,  when  the  proprietors  under 
that  instrument  were  threatened  with  loss  of 
their  estates,  on  the  pretext  that  their  grants 
had  not  passed  under  the  charter  seal.  The  four 
"ancient  men"  were  among  the  last  survivors  of 
the  first  comers.  The  Common's  bounds  originally 
extended  on  the  easterly  side  across  the  present 
Tremont  Street  to  Mason  Street,  opening  from 
West  Street;  and  northward  as  far  as  Beacon 
Street,  including  the  square  now  bounded  by 
Park,  Tremont  and  Beacon  streets.  Thus  it  is 
seen  the  Granary  Burying-ground  and  Park  Street 
were  taken  from  it. 

So  much  for  the  topographical  history  of  the 
Common.  While  we  were  dutifully  outlining  this 
history,  the  Englishman  was  absorbing  the  ex- 
quisite vistas  from  Park  Street  Church  up  Tre- 
mont Street  and  the  Mall;  and  from  the  meeting- 
house up  Park  Street  to  the  noble  old  Bulfinch 
front  of  the  State  House.  Then  he  turned  toward 
the  meeting-house  itself  —  the  "perfectly  felicitous 
Park  Street  Church,"  as   Henry  James  calls  it  — 

[96] 


The  Common  and  Round  About 

and  admired  the  beauty  of  its  site  as  the  focal 
center  of  rich  city  vistas,  and  its  "values"  as  an 
architectural  monument,  the  grace  of  its  composi- 
tion, its  crowning  feature  of  tower  and  tall, 
slender,  graceful  steeple  recalling  Wren's  St. 
Bride's,  Fleet  Street. 

While  this  church  is  less  a  monument  of  Old 
Boston  than  the  Old  South,  King's  Chapel,  and 
Christ  Church,  it  is  classed  with  the  historic 
group  because  of  its  associations,  as  remarkable 
in  their  way  as  those  of  the  others,  and  on  ac- 
count of  its  character  as  one  of  the  finest  types 
of  the  few  remaining  examples  of  the  colonial 
church  architecture.  It  dates  from  1 809-1810, 
erected  for  the  church  founded  in  1808  to  revive 
Trinitarianism,  and  directly  to  combat  the  Uni- 
tarian invasion  which,  starting  with  the  estab- 
lishment of  King's  Chapel,  after  the  Revolution, 
as  the  first  Unitarian  church  in  America,  had 
overwhelmed  all  the  Orthodox  churches  in  Boston 
except  the  Old  South.  Channing  was  then 
preaching  in  the  Federal  Street  Church;  William 
Emerson,  the  father  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson, 
in  the  First  Church;  John  Lathrop  in  the  Second 
Church;    Charles    Lowell,    James    Russell    Lowell's 

[97] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

father,  in  the  West  Church;  John  Thornton 
Kirkland  in  the  New  South,  to  go  from  that 
pulpit  in  1810  to  the  presidency  of  Harvard; 
while  in  1805  Henry  Ware,  Sr.,  a  pronounced 
Unitarian,  had  been  duly  made  Hollis  Professor  of 
Divinity  in  the  Divinity  School.  The  old  Cal- 
vinism was  preached  with  such  fervor  in  the  new 
Park-Street  that  local  wits  early  christened  the 
angle  it  faces  "Brimstone  Corner",  by  which 
name  it  has  been  affectionately  called  ever  since. 
Yet  it  is  the  coldest  of  Boston  corners,  and  around 
it  the  harsh  wintry  winds  swirl  and  snap  and 
sting,  and  the  proposal  of  Thomas  Gold  Appleton, 
rare  coiner  of  Boston  mots  in  his  day,  that  the 
city  fathers  tether  a  shorn  lamb  here,  is  counted 
with  the  happier  of  Boston  sayings. 

The  architect  of  the  church  was  Peter  Banner, 
an  Englishman  then  ranking  locally  with  Bul- 
finch,  while  the  capitals  of  the  beautiful  steeple 
were  designed  by  Solomon  Willard,  a  native 
American  architect,  the  designer  of  Bunker  Hill 
Monument,  next  in  prominence  after  Bulfinch. 
Only  six  years  before  the  church  was  erected 
Park  Street  had  been  laid  out  and  built,  from 
plans    by   Bulfinch.      This    street    had    been   from 

[98] 


The  Common  and  Round  About 

Colony  times  a  lane  called  "Centry",  or  "  Sentry", 
because  it  led  to  Beacon  Hill  (the  highest  peak 
of  which  early  had  that  name)  and  it  had  been 
lined  with  grim  old  public  buildings  —  the  Granary 
at  tha  lower  end;  the  Workhouse  and  Bridewell; 
and  the  Almshouse  at  the  upper  end  at  Beacon 
Street  (which,  by  the  way,  started  humbly  as 
"the  lane  leading  to  the  almshouse").  Among 
these  the  Granary  was  unique.  It  was  a  paternal 
institution  established  by  the  town  authorities  in 
or  about  1662  to  supply  grain  to  the  poor  or  to 
those  who  desired  to  buy  in  small  quantities,  at 
an  advance  on  the  wholesale  price  of  not  more 
than  ten  per  cent.  A  committee  for  the  purchase 
of  the  grain,  and  a  keeper  of  the  Granary,  were 
appointed  annually  by  the  selectmen.  The  build- 
ing, a  long,  unlovely,  wooden  thing,  had  a  capacity 
of  some  twelve  thousand  bushels.  It  was  first 
set  up  on  the  then  upper  side  of  the  Common 
within  the  plot  occupied  by  the  Granary  Bury- 
ing-ground,  but  in  1737  was  removed  to  this 
corner.  Then  the  burying-ground,  which  before 
had  been  called  the  South,  took  on  its  name. 
The  Granary  went  out  of  service  with  the  Revolu- 
tion,   and   became   a   place   of   minor   town  offices 

[99] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

and  small  shops.  These  buildings  were  done 
away  with,  and  Park  Street  was  begun  in  1803 
as  a  dignified  approach  to  the  new  Bulfinch 
State  House  which  had  been  erected  in  1795. 
Where  the  Workhouse  and  Bridewell  had  been, 
appeared  in  1 804-1 805  a  row  of  fine  Bulfinch 
houses.  In  1804  in  place  of  the  old  gambrel- 
roofed  Almshouse  rose  an  expansive  mansion- 
house  of  the  favored  provincial  type,  built  for 
Thomas  Amory,  merchant.  Then  the  church 
replaced  the  Granary,  handsomely  finishing  the 
entrance  corner.  Of  the  Bulfinch  houses  we  see 
two  or  three  yet  remaining,  transformed  for  busi- 
ness purposes.  They  were  the  homes  at  one  time 
and  another  of  Bostonians  of  leading.  The  at- 
tention of  the  Englishman  was  pointed  to  that 
numbered  4  as  interesting  from  its  association 
with  the  Quincy  family.  It  became  the  home  of 
the  first  Mayor  Quincy  after  his  retirement  from 
the  presidency  of  Harvard  in  1854,  an<^  was  oc~ 
cupied  by  him  through  the  rest  of  his  long  and 
useful  life,  which  closed  in  June,  1864,  in  his 
ninety-third  year.  His  next  door  neighbor,  at 
Number  3,  was  Josiah  Quincy,  Jr.,  the  second 
Mayor    Quincy,    whose    term    covered    the    years 

[  100  ] 


The  Common  and  Round  About 

1 846-1 848.  Number  2,  now  rebuilt,  was  the  last 
Boston  house  of  John  Lothrop  Motley,  in  1868- 
1869,  prior  to  his  appointment  as  United  States 
minister  to  England.  Number  8,  now  the  spacious 
home  of  the  Union  Club,  was  originally  the  town 
house  of  Abbott  Lawrence  of  the  distinguished 
Boston  brother  merchants,  "A.  &  A.  Lawrence", 
and  minister  to  the  Court  of  St.  James,  appointed 
in  1849.  Of  the  Amory  house  that  replaced  the 
Almshouse  we  also  see  a  remnant  reconstructed 
for  business,  and  so  happily  as  to  retain  some- 
thing of  its  old-time  air.  It  was  the  house  which 
Lafayette  occupied  as  the  guest  of  the  city  during 
his  stay  in  Boston  on  his  visit  of  1824.  The  part 
on  Park  Street  (it  was  made  with  extensions  into 
two  and  then  four  dwellings  after  Amory's  time) 
has  an  added  interest  as  the  home  of  the  scholarly 
George  Ticknor  from  1830  till  his  death  in  1871, 
where  in  his  handsome  library  overlooking  the 
Common  he  leisurely  wrote  his  "History  of 
Spanish  Literature",  the  work  upon  which  he  was 
engaged  for  twenty  years. 

It  was  going  down  this  famous  Park  Street,  we 
rather  slyly  told  the  Englishman,  that  Charles 
Sumner  relieved  Thackeray  of  a  bundle  that,  true 

[  101  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

to  his  insular  tradition,  he  was  loath  to  carry. 
"The  story  itself  may  be  only  a  tradition",  an- 
swered the  Englishman. 

On  Tremont  Street  alongside  the  Mall  —  or 
Common  Street  as  this  part  of  the  way  con- 
tinued to  be  called  till  the  Town  had  become  the 
City  —  houses  were  scant  when  Bennett  wrote  in 
1740.  Even  when  Park  Street  Church  was  built, 
there  were  only  two  houses  on  the  street  of  more 
than  one  story,  it  is  said.  The  first  estate  of  note 
here  appears  to  have  been  of  the  middle  province 
period.  It  comprised  a  mansion-house  on  the 
Winter  Street  corner  with  a  spacious  garden 
extending  down  Winter  Street  and  back  of  the 
present  Hamilton  Place.  This  seat  certainly  had 
notable  associations.  It  was  occupied  by  the 
troublesome  royal  governor,  Sir  Francis  Bernard, 
during  a  part  at  least  of  his  term  from  1760  to 
his  recall  in  1769.  During  the  Siege,  it  was  one 
of  the  several  headquarters  of  Earl  Percy.  After 
the  Revolution,  in  1780,  it  came  into  the  posses- 
sion of  Samuel  Breck,  a  Boston  merchant  of 
wealth  and  some  distinction,  who  largely  im- 
proved it.  Then,  as  described  in  the  "Recollec- 
tions"   of    his    son    Samuel,    it    was,    "for    a    city 

[  102  ] 


On  Boston  Common  Mall  in  front  of  old  Saint  Paul's. 


The  Common  and  Round  About 

residence",  "remarkably  fine",  with  an  acre  of 
ground  around  the  house  divided  into  kitchen 
and  flower  gardens.  While  the  Brecks  had  the 
place,  the  flower  gardens  were  kept  in  neat  order 
and,  open  to  public  view  through  a  "palisade  of 
great  beauty",  were  the  admiration  of  all.  The 
"Recollections"  tell  of  a  fete  in  these  gardens 
given  by  the  elder  Breck  on  the  news  of  the  birth 
of  the  dauphin.  "Drink",  they  relate,  was  dis- 
tributed from  hogsheads,  while  "the  whole  town 
was  made  welcome  to  the  plentiful  tables  within 
doors."  Mr.  Breck,  removing  to  Philadelphia,  in 
1792  sold  the  estate  to  his  brother-in-law,  John 
Andrews,  —  the  same  of  whom  we  spoke  as  the 
principal  saver  of  the  trees  on  this  Mall  at  the 
time  of  the  Siege,  —  also  a  Boston  merchant  of 
standing;  and  thereafter  Mr.  Andrews  was  its  hos- 
pitable occupant  till  his  death  some  years  later. 
This  Andrews  was  an  unconscious  contributor  to 
local  history,  through  a  bundle  of  letters,  racy 
and  vivid,  that  he  wrote  from  Boston  during  the 
Siege,  which  in  after  years  came  into  the  pos- 
session of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 
They  give  the  most  intimate  details  of  affairs 
and  life  in  the  beleaguered  Town  that  we  have  in 

[  105  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

the  chronicles  of  that  time.  He  was  then  occupy- 
ing a  house  on  School  Street  just  below  the  foot- 
passage  to  Court  Square:  and  the  day  after  the 
:uation  he  entertained  Washington  at  a  dinner 
there. 

Or.  Winter  Street,  midway  down,  the  site  now 
marked  by  a  tablet  attached  to  the  Winter 
Place  side  of  the  great  store  of  Shepard,  Xorwell 
Company  that  covers  it,  was  the  house  which 
Samuel  Adams  occupied  during  the  last  twenty 
yean  of  his  life,  and  where  he  died.  This  had 
been  a  royalist  house  and  so  confiscated.  The 
house  in  which  the  patriot  leader  lived  in  the  pre- 
Revolutionary  period,  and  where  he  was  born,  was 
toward  the  water  front,  near  Church  Green.  Dur- 
ing the  Siege  it  was  practically  ruined. 

Where  St.  Paul's  stands  and  the  towering  shops 
which  frame  and  dwarf  it,  was  another  late 
provincial  estate  that  rivaled  the  Breck-Andrews 
place  in  extent,  spreading  between  Winter  and 
West  streets.  After  the  Revolution  this  was  for 
a  while  known  as  the  Swan  place,  from  Colonel 
James  Swan,  its  owner  at  that  time,  a  remarkable 
man.  He  had  been  a  merchant,  a  member  of 
the   " Boston  Tea   Party'',   soldier  of  the  Revolu- 

f  106  1 


The  Common  and  Round  About 

tion,  friend  of  Lafayette,  speculator.  Going  to 
Paris,  he  had  made  a  fortune  there  and  lost  it. 
After  a  brief  season  at  home  he  returned  to 
Paris,  and  engaging  in  large  ventures  during  and 
after  the  French  Revolution,  acquired  another 
fortune.  Then  he  spent  the  last  twenty-two  years 
of  his  life  in  a  French  prison  for  a  debt  "not  of 
his  contracting",  and  one  which  he  deemed  un- 
just. With  constant  litigation,  judgment  was 
finally  in  his  favor,  but  he  died  a  day  or  two  after 
his  release.  Subsequent  to  the  Swans'  day, 
mansion-house  and  estate  were  transformed  into 
the  " Washington  Gardens",  a  Boston  Yauxhall, 
with  its  little  amphitheater,  or  circus,  its  games, 
and  other  mildly  alluring  attractions.  The  Gar- 
dens were  first  opened  for  performances  in  July, 
1815,  and  flourished  for  a  considerable  time. 

St.  Paul's  Church,  now  the  Episcopal  Cathedral, 
dates  from  1S19-1S20,  and,  counting  King's 
Chapel,  was  the  fourth  Episcopal  church  to  be 
built  in  Boston.  Its  founders  were  a  group  of 
men  of  wealth  and  prominence  in  the  commu- 
nity, mostly  parishioners  of  Trinity,  the  third 
Episcopal  organization,  founded  in  1728,  only 
five    years    after    Christ    Church;    the    edifice    was 

[  107] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

then  on  Summer  Street,  north  side,  near  Wash- 
ington Street.  Their  purpose  was  to  erect  a 
costly  and  architecturally  impressive  church  build- 
ing; and  when  their  Grecian-like  temple  of  stone 
was  finished,  it  seemed  to  them,  as  Phillips  Brooks 
has  said,  "a  triumph  of  architectural  beauty  and 
of  fitness  for  the  Church's  service."  It  was  the 
first  monument  in  the  Town  of  the  Greek  revival 
in  architecture.  The  architects  were  Alexander 
Parris,  an  American  engineer-architect,  who  after- 
ward built  the  Quincy  Market  House;  and  Solo- 
mon Willard.  Willard  carved  the  Ionic  capitals. 
It  was  planned  to  fill  the  pediment  with  a  bas- 
relief  representing  Paul  preaching  at  Athens,  but 
the  fund  was  insufficient  to  meet  the  expense  of 
the  work.  Therefore,  the  rough  stone  we  see  was 
put  in  temporarily,  to  become  a  permanent  fix- 
ture. In  one  of  the  tombs  beneath  the  church 
Warren,  who  fell  at  Bunker  Hill,  was  first  buried, 
the  remains  afterward  being  removed  to  Forest 
Hills  Cemetery  in  Roxbury,  his  birthplace.  In 
another  was  interred  the  historian  Prescott. 

In  1810-1811  appeared  "Colonnade  Row",  the 
most  notable  embellishment  of  the  way  before  the 
erection    of    St.    Paul's  —  a    range   of   twenty-four 

[  108  ] 


The  Common  and  Round  About 

handsome  brick  houses,  designed  by  Bulfinch,  ex- 
tending from  the  south  corner  of  West  Street  to 
the  opening  of  Mason  Street  upon  the  thorough- 
fare. The  name  of  Colonnade  was  given  the 
row  from  the  columns  supporting  a  second-story 
balcony  along  the  front,  which  constituted  a  strik- 
ing feature  of  most  of  the  houses.  The  elegance 
of  their  design  and  their  superb  situation,  over- 
looking the  Mall  and  the  Common's  expansive 
green  to  the  open  bay  and  the  hills  beyond,  made 
them  inviting  to  families  of  means;  and  Colonnade 
Row  was  at  once  admitted  to  the  best  society. 
After  Lafayette's  visit,  the  name  was  changed, 
in  the  Frenchman's  honor,  to  "Fayette  Place";  but 
this  was  retained  only  about  a  dozen  years,  when 
the  old  one  was  restored.  The  range  held  their 
ground  as  stately  dwellings  into  the  eighteen 
sixties.  Then  slowly  one  by  one  they  were  made 
over  for  business  uses.  Parts  of  facades  of  a 
few  of  them  we  yet  discern  in  the  present  line 
of  varied  architecture.  At  the  end  of  the  Mall 
and  looking  across  to  the  Hotel  Touraine,  we  have 
the  site  of  the  modest  mansion-house  in  which 
President  John  Quincy  Adams  sometime  lived, 
and    where    was    born    his    son,    Charles    Francis 

[  109  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

Adams,    minister    to    England    during    the    Civil 
War. 

In  the  old  days  the  train  bands  at  muster 
spread  all  over  the  preserve  with  this  Mall  as 
the  coign  of  vantage,  we  observed,  as  we  three 
now  turned  into  a  side  path  to  cross  malls  and 
paths  trending  westward.  On  the  annual  muster 
day  in  October,  the  Mall  was  lined  with  booths 
and  tents  for  the  sale  of  enticing  edibles  and 
drinkables  —  egg-nog,  rum  punch,  spruce  beer. 
Jollity  and  fun  reigned  throughout  that  holiday, 
albeit  in  Colony  times  the  trainings  opened  and 
closed  with  prayer.  All  the  train  bands  of  the 
town  and  county  were  assembled.  The  line 
was  formed  alongside  of  the  inner  fence  of  the 
Mall  and  extended  from  Park  Street  to  the  Bury- 
ing-ground  here  on  the  south  side.  There  being 
no  trees  to  interfere,  the  military  evolutions  occu- 
pied the  whole  field.  Grand  reviews  filled  up  the 
morning  hours,  and  the  afternoon  was  devoted  to 
sham  fights.  The  fights  were  performed  on  the 
present  parade  ground  on  the  west  side.  The 
training  field  remained  the  whole  preserve  till  the 
nineteenth  century.  It  was  reduced  to  the  limits 
of    the    parade    ground    in    the    eighteen    fifties. 

[  no] 


/ 


/ 


Across  the  Frog  Pond  to  the  old  houses  of  Beacon  Hill. 


*  J 


The  Common  and  Round  About 

The  pasturage  continued  open  till  1830;  then  the 
cows  were  finally  banished. 

Of  the  colonial  tragedies  of  the  Common  we 
could  point  to  no  definite  landmarks.  Just 
where  the  "witches"  were  hanged,  and  the 
Quakers,  cannot  to-day  be  told.  Even  that  the 
Quakers  were  hanged  anywhere  on  the  Common  is 
now  a  question.  Mr.  M.  J.  Canavan,  one  of 
the  most  thorough  of  latter-day  delvers  into  the 
truths  of  Boston's  history,  and  whose  dictum  on 
any  nice  point  is  accepted  as  authoritative,  has 
thrown  the  Dry-as-dusts  into  dismay  with  the 
assertion  that  the  four  Quakers  were  hanged  on 
Boston  Neck,  and  seemingly  proving  it.  Till 
Canavan  spoke,  the  Dry-as-dusts  were  as  sure 
that  the  Common  was  the  place  of  their  hanging 
as  that  they  were  hanged.  Nor  can  we  fix 
exactly  the  spot  where  the  Indian,  son  of  Matoonas, 
was  hanged  for  murder  in  1671,  and  where  "a 
part  of  his  body  was  to  be  seen  upon  a  gibbet  for 
five  years  after."  Nor  precisely  the  place  of  the 
execution  by  shooting,  in  1676,  of  brave  old  Ma- 
toonas himself,  for  his  participation  in  King 
Philip's  War,  betrayed  into  the  authorities'  hands 
by  tribal  enemies,  who  were  permitted  to  be  his 

[  "3  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

executioners.  It  can  only  be  said  that  these,  and 
the  many  other  spectacular  executions  of  men  and 
women  in  the  grim  old  days  on  this  fair  Green, 
were  performed  generally,  if  not  invariably,  on 
its  western  side.  At  first,  it  appears,  the  gallows 
was  at  or  about  the  solitary  "Great  Elm,"  and 
afterward  was  placed  nearer  the  bottom  of  the 
Common,  where  the  victims  were  hastily  buried 
in  the  loose  gravel  of  the  beach  there.  We  may 
imagine  the  scene  of  the  hanging  of  the  "witches" 
in  1648  and  1656,  from  gallows  on  the  knoll 
neighboring  the  "Old  Elm",  the  site  of  which  we 
find  occupied  by  a  descendant,  and  marked  by  a 
tablet.  There  were  only  two  sacrifices  to  the 
witchcraft  delusion  here  in  Boston,  and  eight 
years  apart;  but  the  victims,  as  at  Salem  thirty- 
six  and  forty-four  years  later,  were  both  women 
of  talents  above  the  common,  and  the  delusion 
was  deep-seated.  After  the  first  victim,  Margaret 
Jones,  had  breathed  her  last,  it  was  gravely 
recorded  that  "the  same  day  and  hour  she  was 
executed  there  was  a  very  great  tempest  at 
Connecticut  which  blew  down  many  trees,  &c." 
Perhaps  it  was  at  the  solitary  "Great  Elm"  that 
Matoonas    was    shot,    for    we    read    that    he    was 

[  in] 


The  Common  and  Round  About 

"tied  to  a  tree."  Maybe  the  holiday  Ancient 
and  Honorable  warriors  perform  their  evolutions 
on  the  parade  ground  on  Artillery  Election  day, 
the  first  Monday  of  June,  over  the  graves  of  the 
executed  band  of  Indian  prisoners,  some  thirty  of 
them,  of  King  Philip's  War.  Or  again,  maybe  they 
march  and  countermarch  over  the  place  where 
fell  the  British  grenadier  shot  for  desertion  in 
1768,  the  two  British  regiments  then  quartered 
in  Boston  "being  present  under  arms."  On  the 
parade  ground,  too,  may  have  been  the  spectacle, 
after  the  Province  had  become  the  Common- 
wealth, of  the  hanging  of  Rachel  Whall  for  high- 
way robbery,  which  consisted  in  the  snatching  of 
a  bonnet  from  the  hand  of  another  woman  and 
running  off  with  it. 

Of  the  romances  of  the  Common  that  daintiest 
love  scene  —  the  proposal  of  the  Autocrat  to  the 
schoolmistress  on  the  long  mall  running  from 
Beacon  Street  Mall  at  the  Joy  Street  entrance, 
across  the  Common's  whole  length  to  the  Boylston- 
Tremont  Streets  corner  —  is  recalled  by  the  re- 
cently placed  sign  we  observe  at  the  head  of  this 
mall:  "Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  Path."  "We 
called  it  the  long  path   and  were  fond  of  it.     I 

[  US  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

felt  very  weak  indeed  (though  of  a  tolerably 
robust  habit)  as  we  came  opposite  the  head  of 
this  path  on  that  morning.  I  think  I  tried  to 
speak  twice  without  making  myself  distinctly 
audible.  At  last  I  got  out  the  question,  —  Will 
you  take  the  long  path  with  me?  —  Certainly, — 
said  the  schoolmistress,  —  with  much  pleasure.  — 
Think,  —  I  said,  —  before  you  answer;  if  you  take 
the  long  path  with  me  now,  I  shall  interpret  it 
that  we  are  to  part  no  more!  —  The  schoolmis- 
tress stepped  back  with  a  sudden  movement,  as  if 
an  arrow  had  struck  her.  One  of  the  long  granite 
blocks  used  as  seats  was  hard  by,  —  the  one  you 
may  still  see  close  by  the  Gingko  tree.  —  Pray,  sit 
down,  —  I  said.  —  No,  no,  she  answered  softly,  — 
I  will  walk  the  long  path  with  you!"  From  the 
Autocrat's  day  the  mall  has  held  Holmes'  happy 
title.  The  hard  old  granite  seat  has  long  since 
gone,  but  the  Gingko  tree  remains. 

At    the    Spruce    Street    entrance    from    Beacon 
Street  we  pass  to  Beacon  Hill. 


116  ] 


OVER  BEACON  HILL 

AS  we  were  strolling  down  the  Beacon  Street 
Mall  while  the  Englishman  remarked  the 
charm  of  the  Beacon  Street  border  largely  of  old- 
time  architecture,  disfigured  though  it  is  in  spots 
by  the  intrusion  of  incongruous  reconstruction,  the 
Artist  recalled  the  earliest  extant  painter's  sketch 
of  the  Common,  of  a  date  some  sixty  years  after 
Bennett's  pen  picture,  which  includes  this  border. 
It  is  a  water  color  representing  the  Common  and 
Beacon  Street  as  they  appeared  in  or  about  1805- 
1806,  when  the  making  of  Park  Street  was  under 
way,  and  the  development  of  Beacon  Hill  west  of 
the  new  Bulfinch  State  House  into  a  fair  urban 
West  End,  was  progressing.  Although  the  border 
was  occupied  in  part  in  the  Province  period  our 
guest  was  told  that  no  piece  of  provincial  archi- 
tecture is  seen  in  the  line.  The  oldest  dates  back 
only  to  1 804-1 805,  about  the  period  of  this 
painting.     Several  pieces  are  of  the  second  decade 

[  117] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

of  the  nineteenth  century.  Others  are  examples 
of  the  spacious  Boston  domestic  architecture  of 
the  eighteen  thirties. 

From  its  first  occupation  the  border  was  a 
favored  seat  of  Boston  respectability.  When  Ben- 
nett wrote  in  1740  two  seats  were  here,  one  at  the 
head  of  the  line,  the  other  at  the  foot.  The 
street  was  then  a  lane  through  the  Common  "and 
so  to  the  sea"  —  the  Back  Bay,  the  bound  of  this 
side  of  the  Common  then  being  the  hill.  The 
house  at  the  head  was  the  mansion  of  Thomas 
Hancock,  uncle  of  the  famous  John,  then  new,  it 
having  been  erected  in  1737,  and  pronounced  one 
of  the  most  elegant  in  Town.  At  the  foot  or  back 
on  the  hill  slope,  were  "Bannister's  Gardens", 
the  estate  of  Thomas  Bannister,  merchant  —  or 
at  this  time  of  his  heirs  —  occupying  the  six- 
acre  home-lot  of  William  Blaxton,  the  first 
planter,  which  he  reserved  from  the  sale  of  the 
peninsula  to  the  inhabitants.  Between  these  two 
places  the  hill  spread  out  much  as  in  its  primitive 
state.  The  Hancock  mansion  was  the  first  house 
to  be  erected  on  the  top  of  the  hill  west  of  the 
summit,  or  the  highest  of  the  three  peaks.  The 
mansion-house  stood  in  solitary  grandeur  with  no 

[  118] 


Over  Beacon  Hill 

near  neighbor  westward  for  some  thirty  years. 
Then  in  or  about  1768  John  Singleton  Copley, 
the  painter,  built  here,  setting  his  house  midway 
down  the  line,  about  where  we  see  the  distin- 
guished double-swell  front  stone  house,  now  the 
home  of  the  Somerset  Club,  originally  the  early 
nineteenth-century  mansion-house  of  David  Sears, 
merchant,  eminent  in  his  day.  Copley  at  this  time 
was  at  the  height  of  his  prosperity  as  the  court 
painter  of  Boston  gentility;  and  upon  his  fortunate, 
and  happy,  marriage  in  1769  with  Miss  Susanna 
Clarke,  the  fifth  daughter  of  Richard  Clarke,  a 
wealthy  merchant,  agent  of  the  East  India  Com- 
pany in  Boston,  and  later  one  of  the  consignees 
of  the  tea  which  the  Bostoneers  threw  overboard, 
he  acquired  a  large  part  of  the  hill  west  of  the 
Hancock  holdings,  including  the  Blaxton  six-acre 
lot  which  had  passed  from  the  Bannisters.  Thus 
Copley  became  the  holder  of  the  largest  private 
estate  in  the  Town  —  a  rare  distinction  for  a 
painter  of  that  day,  or  of  any  day. 

From  that  time  till  after  the  Revolution  the 
border  was  occupied  for  the  most  part  by  the 
Hancock  and  Copley  places  alone.  Copley's 
house  has  been   attractively  described   as   a   com- 

[  "9] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

fortable  roomy  wooden  mansion,  or  rather  coun- 
try house,  of  colonial  yellow,  lacking  the  elegance 
of  its  grander  neighbor  but  refined,  with  pleasant 
gardens,  ample  stable  and  outbuildings.  Copley 
called  his  domain  "The  Farm."  In  this  house  he 
painted  some  of  his  best  portraits.  Trumbull, 
the  younger  painter,  in  his  familiar  description  of 
a  call  upon  him  here,  pictures  him  engagingly  as 
the  prosperous  painter  and  social  light.  Copley 
left  this  house  and  went  to  England  in  1774  with 
his  father-in-law,  never  to  return  to  Boston  or  to 
the  country,  although  his  heart  was  with  the 
American  cause.  A  year  later,  on  the  edge  of 
the  Siege,  his  family  also  sailed  and  joined  him 
there.  After  the  Revolution  General  Harry  Knox 
occupied  the  yellow  mansion  for  a  season,  and 
here  portly  Madam  Knox,  in  her  slimmer  years 
the  toast  of  the  Continental  army  officers  as  the 
American  Beauty,  gave  sumptuous  dinners.  Then 
in  1795,  upon  the  selection  of  a  site  on  the  hill- 
top, west  of  the  summit  —  the  Hancock  cow  pas- 
ture —  for  the  Bulfinch  State  House,  and  the 
beginning  of  its  erection,  the  Copley  domain  was 
acquired  by  two  astute  Bostonians,  Harrison 
Gray  Otis  and  Jonathan  Mason,  who  saw  in  the 

[  120  ] 


Dome  of  the  State   House,  and  site  of  the  old  John 
Hancock  House. 


------ 


■ 


[f.fff 


Over  Beacon  Hill 

establishment  of  the  new  State  House  here  their 
opportunity  for  a  profitable  real  estate  operation 
on  a  large  scale.  On  their  subsequent  union  of 
interests  with  two  others,  owners  of  contiguous 
lands,  began  the  transformation  of  the  hill  from 
a  place  of  fields  and  pastures  into  a  sumptuous 
residential  quarter.  In  course  of  time  the  emi- 
nence was  graded,  West  Hill,  or  Mount  Vernon,  the 
third  peak,  on  the  western  side,  was  cut  down, 
and  the  new  West  End  of  pleasant  streets  and  fair 
dwellings  rose,  bringing  fortune  to  the  syndicate, 
and  renown  to  Beacon  Hill. 

The  picture  of  1 805-1 806  shows,  at  the  head  of 
the  Beacon  Street  line,  the  new  Bulfinch  State 
House,  completed  in  1798.  Next  west  facing  the 
street  in  a  row,  appear  the  Hancock  mansion- 
house,  carriage-house,  and  stable.  At  this  time 
the  mansion  was  occupied  by  Madam  Scott,  John 
Hancock's  widow,  who  had  married  one  of  his 
ship  masters,  Captain  James  Scott,  and  was  dis- 
pensing the  hospitality  of  the  house  as  graciously 
if  not  so  lavishly  as  in  Governor  John's  day. 
The  estate  was  yet  one  of  the  largest  and  finest 
in  Town.  When  Thomas  Hancock  died  in  1764 
it  comprised,  with  the  mansion-house  and  various 

[  123  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

outbuildings,  gardens,  orchards,  nurseries,  and 
pastures;  and  extended  along  Beacon  Street  to  the 
present  Joy  Street,  back  over  the  hill  to  Mt. 
Vernon  and  Hancock  streets,  and  over  the  site 
of  the  Bulfinch  State  House  to  the  summit.  All 
this  he  devised  to  his  widow,  along  with  his 
"chariots,  chaises,  carriages,  and  horses",  and 
"all  my  negroes",  and  with  a  neat  sum  of  money, 
making  Lydia  Hancock,  daughter  of  a  Boston 
bookseller,  the  richest  widow  that  had  to  that 
day  ever  lived  in  Boston.  She  died  in  1777,  when 
the  estate  passed  by  her  will  to  John  Hancock, 
her  favorite  nephew,  who  maintained  it  in  all  its 
glory  and  made  it  historic,  till  his  death  in  1790. 
He  died  intestate,  having  been  able  on  his  death- 
bed to  dictate  only  the  minutes  of  a  will,  in  which, 
it  is  said,  he  gave  the  mansion-house  to  the 
Commonwealth. 

It  remained  much  in  its  original  state  a  re- 
spected landmark  long  after  the  upbuilding  of 
the  lands  about  it.  At  length,  in  1863,  heroic 
efforts  of  citizens  to  secure  its  reservation  by 
the  State  as  a  permanent  memorial  having  failed, 
it  was  demolished,  to  the  keen  regret  of  all  Bos- 
tonians    even    to    the    present    day.      Its    site    is 

[  124  ] 


Over  Beacon  Hill 

marked  by  the  two  imposing  heavy-faced  houses 
of  the  brown-stone  period  of  domestic  architecture, 
near  the  unique  foot  passage  of  Hancock  Avenue 
alongside  the  State  House  grounds.  The  upper 
one  is  now  a  publishing  house,  the  first  of  a 
succession  of  old-time  mansions  along  the  line 
transformed,  without  marring  their  rare  facades, 
into  book-producers'  headquarters,  which  suggests 
the  colloquial  title  of  "Publishers'  Row."  The 
houses  next  below  the  two  brown-stones,  occupy- 
ing the  remainder  of  the  front  of  the  old  Han- 
cock estate  to  the  Joy  Street  corner,  are  all  of 
early  nineteenth-century  date  and  associated  with 
the  names  of  famous  Boston  merchants.  The 
mansion  at  the  corner  was  sometime  the  seat  of 
George  Cabot,  distinguished  in  his  day  in  public 
as  in  mercantile  life  and  as  the  astute  head  of 
the  Essex  Junto.  Just  below  the  lower  Joy 
Street  corner  we  have  pictured  in  the  1 805-1 806 
water  color,  a  neat  wooden  house  with  pillared 
front,  and  of  a  "peach-bloom"  color.  This  was 
erected  before  1792  as  the  country  seat  (for  this 
part  of  the  Town  was  counted  suburban  at  that 
time)  of  Doctor  John  Joy,  one  of  the  owners  of 
land   contiguous   to   the   Copley  domain  who   be- 

[  125  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

came  a  member  of  the  syndicate  that  developed 
the  hill.  His  estate  occupied  the  block  between 
Joy  and  Walnut  streets,  and  extended  back  up 
the  hill  to  Mt.  Vernon  Street.  The  peach-bloom 
house  remained  till  1833,  when  it  was  removed, 
and  upon  the  estate  were  erected  three  houses  on 
the  Beacon  Street  front,  and  four  on  Joy  Street, 
all  of  which,  save  one,  are  still  retained,  good 
examples  of  the  highest  type  of  the  Boston  swell- 
front.  The  first  of  the  three  on  Beacon  Street, 
which  the  present  apartment-house,  the  Tudor, 
replaces,  was  occupied  successively  by  merchants 
of  distinction  —  Israel  Thorndike;  Robert  Gould 
Shaw,  grandfather  of  Colonel  Robert  Gould  Shaw, 
commander  of  the  first  negro  regiment  recruited 
at  the  North  in  the  Civil  War,  whose  memorial 
by  Saint  Gaudens  we  have  seen  at  the  head  of 
the  mall  facing  the  street;  and  Frederick  Tudor, 
the  "ice  king,"  who  first  introduced  ice  into  the 
tropics  and  made  a  fortune  in  the  adventure. 

"No",  the  Englishman  who  had  heard  the 
legend  was  answered,  "it  was  not  he  who  was  the 
recipient  of  George  Ill's  hearty  reception  at 
court,  — 'Eh?  Tudor?  One  of  us?'  It  was  his 
father,   Judge  Tudor,   friend   of   Washington,    and 

[  126] 


Over  Beacon  Hill 

of  his  staff."  In  the  other  two  of  these  three 
houses  have  also  lived  notable  merchants.  So, 
too,  were  highly  respected  merchants  the  first 
occupants  of  the  houses  next  below  to  the  Wal- 
nut Street  corner,  both  of  an  earlier  date  — 
erected  about  1816.  The  first  was  the  seat  of 
Samuel  Appleton,  till  his  death  in  1853  at  the 
age  of  eighty-seven;  the  corner  one,  of  Benjamin 
P.  Homer.  Next  in  the  picture  appears  a  brick 
mansion-house  of  quiet  dignity,  on  the  lower 
Walnut  Street  corner.  This  we  see  yet  standing, 
presenting  a  side  to  Beacon  Street  instead  of  the 
front  as  originally,  the  front  door  having  been 
shifted  to  the  Walnut  Street  side  when  the  lane 
that  became  Walnut  Street  was  widened.  It  is 
distinguished  as  the  oldest  of  all  now  on  the  line. 
It  was  built  in  1 804-1 805  by  John  Phillips, 
lawyer,  a  Bostonian  by  family  connections  dis- 
tinctively of  the  Boston  "Brahmin"  class,  at 
that  time  the  Town  advocate  and  public  prosecu- 
tor, afterward  first  mayor  of  the  city;  but  of 
wider  name  as  the  father  of  Wendell  Phillips,  who 
was  born  in  this  house  in  181 1.  At  a  later  period 
it  was  a  Winthrop  house,  the  house  of  Lieutenant- 
governor  Thomas  L.  Winthrop,  accomplished  gen- 

[  127  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

tleman,  but,  like  the  estimable  John  Phillips, 
generally  known  as  the  father  of  a  more  dis- 
tinguished son,  Robert  C.  Winthrop. 

This  is  the  last  house  in  the  line  shown  in  the 
picture  of  1 805-1 806.  The  two  next  below  it,  rich 
examples  of  the  distinctive  Boston  type,  date  from 
1 8 16.  The  upper  one  was  originally  the  mansion 
of  Nathan  Appleton,  merchant  and  manufac- 
turer, younger  brother  of  William  Appleton;  the 
other,  of  Daniel  P.  Parker,  a  large  shipowner  in 
his  time.  Of  the  David  Sears  stone  mansion  we 
have  spoken.  That  next  but  one  below,  the  brick 
mansion  with  yellow  porch  and  luxuriant  mantle  of 
woodbine  and  wistaria,  dates  from  the  eighteen- 
twenties,  originally  built  for  Harrison  Gray  Otis, 
his  second  mansion  erected  on  the  Copley  domain, 
and  designed  to  combine  elegance  and  comfort. 
Here  Mr.  Otis,  one  of  the  most  courtly  of  Bos- 
tonians,  lived  the  remainder  of  his  gentlemanly 
life,  dispensing,  we  are  told,  a  refined  hospitality. 
He  died  in  1848.  Originally  between  the  Sears 
and  Otis  mansions  was  a  beautiful  garden.  The 
house  next  below  was  long  the  seat  of  Eben  D. 
Jordan,  one  of  the  earliest  of  Boston's  retail 
"merchant  princes." 

[  128  ] 


Over  Beacon  Hill 

At  the  Spruce  Street  entrance  where  we  turn 
from  the  mall  for  the  stroll  over  the  hill,  we  are 
opposite  the  site  of  the  first  Boston  house  and  the 
seat  of  the  first  Bostonian,  in  which  Winthrop 
and  his  associates  at  their  coming  found  the  ami- 
able and  cultivated  Englishman  so  agreeably  es- 
tablished, surrounded  by  his  garden  of  English 
roses,  his  orchard  growing  the  first  American 
apple,  and  close  by  the  "excellent  spring"  of 
which  he  had  "acquainted"  Winthrop  when  cour- 
teously "inviting  and  soliciting"  the  governor  to 
come  over  from  Charlestown  and  settle  on  his 
peninsula. 

The  pioneer  cottage  is  supposed  to  have  stood 
on  or  just  back  from  this  Beacon  Street  line 
somewhere  between  this  Spruce  Street  and  Charles 
Street;  while  the  six-acre  home-lot  extended  back 
up  the  hillside  over  what  are  now  Chestnut 
Street,  Mt.  Vernon  Street,  and  Louisburg  Square 
to  Pinckney  Street.  It  is  a  fascinating  picture 
which  the  historians  have  given  us  of  this  first 
Boston  seat  and  of  this  first  Bostonian.  Blaxton 
had  been  living  here  alone  some  six  years  before 
the  coming  of  the  colonists,  bartering  with  the 
Indians   for   beaver   skins   for   trading,   cultivating 

[  129  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

his  garden  and  orchard,  browsing  among  his  books 
of  which  he  seems  to  have  had  good  store,  and 
in  neighborly  communion  with  the  three  or  four 
other  Englishmen  then  established  on  islands  in 
the  harbor  and  on  the  near  mainland,  who  had 
come  out  as  he  had  with  Robert  Gorges  in  1625. 
He  was  well  born,  a  graduate  of  Emanuel,  the 
Puritan  college,  Cambridge,  with  his  degree  of 
Bachelor  of  Arts  in  1617,  and  Master  of  Arts  in 
1621.  Though  a  nonconformist  "and  detesting 
prelacy,"  he  still  adhered  to  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, continuing  to  wear  his  canonical  coat.  For 
a  while  after  the  settlement  had  begun  he  was 
little  disturbed,  probably  because  of  the  remote- 
ness of  his  seat  from  the  Town  center  on  the 
harbor  front,  and  lived  along  amicably  with  the 
Puritans.  But  at  length  his  independent  spirit 
rebelled,  and  he  declared,  so  the  tradition  runs, 
"I  came  from  England  because  I  did  not  like  the 
Lords  Bishops,  but  I  cannot  join  with  you  because 
I  could  not  be  under  the  Lords  Brethren."  So, 
after  the  sale  of  his  rights  in  the  peninsula,  with 
the  exception  of  the  home-lot,  he  bought  a  stock 
of  cows  with  the  sum  he  received,  thirty  pounds, 
and  moved  off  again  into  the  wilderness.     His  new 

[  130  ] 


Colonial  Doorway  and  Lamp  on  Mount  Vernon  Street. 


Over  Beacon  Hill 

home  was  established  in  Rhode  Island  on  the 
banks  of  the  river  which  afterward  took  his  name 
—  spelled  Blackstone.  He,  however,  retained 
pleasant  relations  with  his  Boston  friends,  and 
some  years  after  his  withdrawal  he  married  in 
Boston  a  Puritan  widow.  He  seems  to  have  been 
a  kindly  gentleman,  fond  of  nature  and  a  lover 
of  animals;  and  there  is  declared  to  be  historical 
proof  for  the  quaint  story  that  he  trained  a  moose- 
colored  bull  to  bit  and  bridle  and  saddle. 

It  is  felicitous,  our  Englishman  agreed,  that  the 
neighborhood  of  the  home  of  this  scholarly  first 
Bostonian  should  have  in  after  years  become  the 
favorite  dwelling-place  of  men  of  letters,  and 
the  literary  workshop  of  modern  Boston.  On  the 
home-lot  site,  on  this  Beacon  Street  line,  lived 
William  H.  Prescott  during  the  last  fourteen 
years  of  his  life,  his  house  being  the  upper 
of  the  two  with  pillared  porticoes,  we  see 
below  Spruce  Street,  Number  55.  Here  he  pre- 
pared the  greater  part  of  his  histories  of  the 
Spanish  conquest  when  almost  blind.  On  the 
cornice  of  his  library-room  were  fixed  those 
"crossed  swords"  to  which  Thackeray  alludes  in 
the     opening     lines     of  "The     Virginians"  —  the 

[  133  1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

swords  borne  by  Prescott's  grandfather,  Colonel 
Prescott,  the  commander  at  the  Battle  of  Bunker 
Hill,  and  by  his  wife's  grandfather,  Captain  Lin- 
zee,  the  commander  of  the  "Falcon,"  one  of  the 
British  warships  in  the  same  engagement.  These 
crossed  swords,  our  Englishman  was  told,  are  now 
to  be  seen  similarly  attached  to  a  library  wall  in 
the  house  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  So- 
ciety, to  which  they  were  given  after  Prescott's 
death.  Also  on  the  home-lot  site,  back  of  the 
Prescott  house,  on  Chestnut  Street,  Number  50, 
Francis  Parkman  lived  for  twenty-nine  years, 
during  which  appeared  all  of  the  seven  volumes 
of  his  "France  and  England  in  North  America." 
Nearly  opposite  Parkman's,  at  Number  43,  lived 
the  poet  Richard  Henry  Dana  for  more  than  forty 
years  of  his  long  life  of  ninety-one  years,  which 
closed  here  in  1876. 

Higher  up,  at  Number  17,  lived  the  poet-preacher, 
Cyrus  A.  Bartol,  for  more  than  sixty  years  of  his 
almost  as  long  life,  which  closed  in  his  eighty- 
eighth  year  in  1900.  Doctor  Bartol's  house,  and 
Number  15,  his  next  door  neighbors'  and  kins- 
folks' —  the  Reverend  and  Mrs.  John  T.  Sargent, 
both  leaders  in  their  time  in  "advanced  thought" 

1 134] 


Over  Beacon  Hill 

—  were  the  meeting  places  alternately  of  the 
Radical  Club.  This  club  was  the  descendant  of 
the  Transcendental  Club  of  the  forties  in  which 
sparkled  such  lights  as  Emerson,  George  Ripley, 
the  founder  of  "Brook  Farm,"  and  Margaret 
Fuller.  At  Number  16  John  Lothrop  Motley 
lived  in  the  late  forties  and  early  fifties.  Lower 
down,  at  Number  33,  John  G.  Palfrey  resided 
in  the  early  sixties,  but  in  the  late  sixties  his 
home  was  in  Louisburg  Square.  On  West  Cedar 
Street,  opening  from  Chestnut  Street  down  the 
hill,  at  Number  3,  the  "poet  for  poets,"  and 
translator  of  Dante,  Doctor  T.  W.  Parsons,  dwelt 
for  some  time  in  his  latter  years  with  his  brother- 
in-law,  George  Lunt,  a  poet  of  the  eighteen  fifties, 
and  his  sister,  Mrs.  Lunt,  writer  of  graceful 
lyrics.  Sometime  after  the  Lunts'  day  Henry 
Childs  Merwin,  one  of  the  small  group  of  high 
ranking  modern  American  essayists,  occupied  this 
house.  At  the  upper  corner  of  West  Cedar  and 
Mt.  Vernon  streets  Professor  Percival  Lowell,  the 
astronomer,  who  has  made  Mars  so  neighborly, 
dwells  and  works. 

In    Louisburg    Square,    at    Number    2,    William 
Dean    Howells    lived    when    editing    the    Atlantic 

[  13s] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

Monthly,  Number  10  was  the  home  of  Louisa  M. 
Alcott  in  her  latter  prosperous  years,  and  here 
her  remarkable  father,  A.  Bronson  Alcott,  passed 
in  comfort  his  last  days  and  serenely  died.  On 
Mt.  Vernon  Street,  above  Louisburg  Square,  at 
Number  83,  William  Ellery  Channing  lived  during 
the  latter  years  of  his  choice  life,  which  closed  in 
1842.  On  the  opposite  side,  at  Number  76, 
Margaret  Deland  wrote  the  novels  that  first 
brought  her  fame.  Later  she  was  domiciled  farther 
down  on  the  hillslope,  at  Number  112.  At  the 
top  of  the  hill,  the  house  Number  59,  with  clas- 
sic entrance  door,  was  the  last  home  of  Thomas 
Bailey  Aldrich.  Earlier  Aldrich  had  lived  at  the 
foot  of  the  hill,  on  Charles  Street,  Number  131, 
now  forlorn,  then  fair  and  beautiful  with  rich  borders 
of  shade  trees  —  near  neighbor  of  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  at  Number  164,  and  James  T.  Fields, 
Number  148.  His  first  home  in  Boston,  to 
which  he  came  to  live  in  1867,  was  the  "little 
house  on  Pinckney  Street,"  of  his  pleasant  de- 
scription —  Number  84,  on  the  slope  toward 
West  Cedar  Street. 

On  Pinckney  Street  up  the  slope  have  lived  at 
different   periods:   John   S.   Dwight,   master   music 

1 136] 


Number  7./ T  2  Pinckney  Sir 


Over  Beacon  Hill 

critic,  editor  of  Dwigkfs  Journal  of  Music  (1852- 
1881),  at  Number  66;  George  S.  Hillard,  choice 
literary  critic  and  essayist  in  the  forties  and 
fifties,  at  Number  62  in  his  latter  years,  earlier 
at  Number  54,  where  Hawthorne  was  much  a 
guest,  and  perhaps  lived  for  a  while  with  his 
friend  (and  whence,  by  the  way,  Hawthorne 
directed  that  unique  letter  to  James  Freeman 
Clarke,  in  July,  1842,  engaging  the  good  minister 
to  marry  him  to  Sophia  Peabody,  but  without 
naming  place  or  date);  Louise  Imogen  Guiney, 
poet  and  essayist,  at  Number  16,  before  her  re- 
moval to  Oxford,  England;  Edwin  P.  Whipple, 
critic  and  essayist  of  leading  in  his  time,  and  one 
of  the  literary  lecturers  most  sought  during  the 
flourishing  days  of  the  "Lyceum"  (he  is  said  to 
have  lectured  more  than  a  thousand  times),  at 
Number  11,  near  the  head  of  the  street.  This 
was  Whipple's  house  for  nearly  forty  years,  till 
his  death  in  1886.  His  working  study  was  a 
pleasant  room  on  the  second  floor  delightfully 
cluttered  with  books.  In  this  house  now  refash- 
ioned is  fittingly  the  literary  workshop  of  Miss 
Alice  Brown,  story  writer  and  prize  play  winner. 
In  this  quarter,  built  up   after  London  models 

[  139  1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

with  local  variations  —  Chestnut  Street  of  archi- 
tectural refinement,  embellished  with  doorways 
that  Bostonians  term  colonial;  quaint  Acorn  Street, 
a  single  carriage-width  and  with  a  single  line  of 
old  style  toy  houses;  reserved  Louisburg  Square; 
narrow  Pinckney  Street  of  variegated  archi- 
tecture and  gentility;  stately  Mt.  Vernon  Street 
mounting  from  the  river  over  the  hill  to  the 
State  House  Archway  and,  as  Henry  James  whim- 
sically pictures,  "fairly  hanging  there  to  rest, 
like  some  good  flushed  lady  of  more  than  middle 
age,  a  little  spent  and  'blown'",  —  here  in  this 
mellow  quarter,  with  the  London  flavor  yet 
lingering  about  it,  our  Englishman  remarked  that, 
like  Daniel  NeaPs  "gentleman  from  London"  a 
century  back,  he  felt  "almost  at  home"  as  he 
observed  its  character  and  its  houses. 

In  Chestnut  Street  his  attention  was  especially 
called  to  the  group  of  three  houses,  Numbers  13, 
15,  and  17  —  the  Bartol  house  and  its  neigh- 
bors —  for  their  architectural  interest,  and  also 
because  they  were  the  first  houses  built  on  this 
street,  and  were  the  gifts  of  their  builder,  Madam 
Hepsibah  Swan,  one  of  the  four  composing  the 
syndicate  that   developed  this   West  End,   to  her 

[  140  ] 


Over  Beacon  Hill 

three  married  daughters,  in  about  1810.  Madam 
Swan  was  the  wife  of  that  remarkable  Colonel 
James  Swan  of  whose  mansion-house  on  Tremont, 
then  Common,  Street  beside  the  Common,  we 
have  spoken.  On  Mt.  Vernon  Street  the  upper 
line  of  broad-breasted,  spacious  mansions  of  a 
past  sumptuous  style,  set  back  from  the  public 
sidewalk  in  aristocratic  seclusion,  impressed  our 
guest  as  the  distinguishing  note  of  the  street. 
The  fine  old  colonial  mansion  with  pebble-paved 
courtyard,  the  third  in  the  group  of  three  houses 
next  this  block  and  just  above  Louisburg  Square, 
the  Englishman  was  told,  was  the  first  mansion- 
house  that  Harrison  Gray  Otis  erected  for  his  own 
occupation  on  the  Copley  purchase,  and  dates 
from  about  1800.  In  Louisburg  Square  he  was 
pointed  to  the  central  enclosure  bedecked  with 
tall  trees,  and  toy  statues  at  either  end,  as  the 
place  of  Blaxton's  "excellent  spring." 

There  was  the  "dark  side"  of  the  hill,  the 
slope  north  of  Pinckney  Street,  that  we  did  not 
penetrate,  for  the  atmosphere  that  once  gave  this 
side  peculiar  distinction  has  gone,  and  it  is  no 
longer  interesting,  or  over-clean.  It  was  the 
"  dark  side "  from  the  free  negro  settlement  occu- 

[  Hi  1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

pying  the  north  slope  below  Myrtle  and  Revere 
Streets  before  the  Civil  War  and  after,  and  as  a 
center  of  anti-slavery  agitation.  The  line  between  the 
haven  of  self-satisfied  middle-classism  on  the  south 
side  and  the  north  side  residential  quarter  with 
its  colored  fringe,  was  sharply  drawn.  Fifty  or 
sixty  years  ago  over  and  on  the  hill's  brow  in 
comparative  obscurity  were  nurtured  the  seeds 
of  anti-slavery  and  abolitionism  later  to  bloom  so 
terribly.  After  dark  in  the  eighteen  forties  and 
fifties  these  little  streets  must  have  reeked  with 
sedition  against  respectability.  It  was  in  the 
schoolroom  of  the  little  negro  church  on  Smith 
Court  off  Joy  (then  Belknap)  Street,  and  below 
Myrtle  Street,  that  on  that  bitter  cold,  snowy 
January  night,  in  1832,  the  New  England  Anti- 
Slavery  Society  was  organized  by  the  small  band 
who  had  been  barred  out  of  Faneuil  Hall,  when 
Garrison  uttered  his  memorable  prophecy:  "We 
have  met  here  to-night  in  this  obscure  school- 
house;  our  numbers  are  few  and  our  influence 
limited;  but  mark  my  prediction.  Faneuil  Hall 
shall  ere  long  echo  with  the  principles  we  have 
set  forth.  We  shall  shake  the  Nation  by  this 
mighty   power."      The    little    meeting    house    was 

[  142  ] 


Over  Beacon  Hill 

the  scene  of  many  more  abolition  meetings,  and 
it  might  have  been  mobbed  had  it  not  been  of 
stout  brick.  It  yet  stands  in  the  little  court,  but 
is  now,  and  long  has  been,  a  Jewish  synagogue. 

At  the  head  of  Mt.  Vernon  Street  as  we  ap- 
proached the  Archway  we  crossed  the  gardens  of 
the  old  Hancock  place,  or  the  site  of  them,  be- 
tween Hancock  Avenue  and  Hancock  Street.  The 
Archway  is  a  quite  modern  affair,  we  observed, 
and  marks  great  changes  made  in  the  topography 
hereabouts.  It  dates  back  only  to  1 889-1 895,  with 
the  erection  of  the  State  House  Annex,  the  second 
addition  to  the  Bulflnch  Front,  and  preserving  the 
traditions  of  the  original  structure,  beneath  which 
it  passes.  Before  that  time  Mt.  Vernon  Street  con- 
tinuing, as  the  Archway  now  carries  it,  to  the 
farther  side  of  the  State  House,  there  took  a 
sharp  turn  to  the  right  and  passed  into  Beacon 
Street  nearly  opposite  the  head  of  Park  Street.  It 
was  then  lined  with  fine  houses,  mostly  Boston 
swell-fronts.  From  its  north  side  at  the  turn 
opened  Beacon  Hill  Place,  a  delightful  foot  passage 
to  Bowdoin  Street,  bounded  by  three  aristocratic 
houses,  all  historic  from  the  character  of  their 
occupants    at    different    periods.      These    pleasant 

[  143  1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

houses  and  street  lines  were  swept  off  to  make 
way  for  the  Annex,  and  for  the  park  at  the  side, 
State  House  Park.  Also  went  down  the  Beacon 
Hill  Reservoir,  a  massive  fortress-like  structure  on 
the  Hancock  Street  line,  facing  Derne  Street,  with 
noble  arches  on  its  front,  built  in  1849,  and  called 
in  its  day  the  noblest  piece  of  architecture  in  the 
city.  The  Annex  and  the  space  at  its  park  side 
mark  the  site  of  the  summit,  or  highest  of  the  three 
peaks  of  the  hill;  while  the  pillar  of  stone  topped 
with  an  eagle  which  we  see  in  the  park  facing 
Ashburton  Place,  is  a  duplicate  of  the  monument 
that  last  crowned  the  peak  in  place  of  the  beacon 
of  Colony  and  Province  days  —  the  monument  of 
Bulfinch's  design  erected  in  1790-1791,  the  first 
in  the  country  to  commemorate  the  Revolution. 
The  peak  remained  unshorn,  a  beautiful  grassy 
cone-shaped  mound,  behind  the  Bulfinch  Front 
reaching  almost  as  high  as  the  gilded  dome  now 
reaches,  till  181 1.  It  was  cherished  then  as  it 
had  been  from  Colony  days  as  the  crowning  glory 
of  the  Town.  A  visit  to  its  top  for  the  fine  view 
which  it  commanded  was  the  finishing  feature  of 
the  round  of  Boston  sights.  On  pleasant  summer 
evenings    gay    dinner    or    supper   parties    at    the 

[  144  1 


Over  Beacon  Hill 

houses  in  its  neighborhood  were  wont  not  infre- 
quently to  adjourn  to  the  lookout  for  enjoyment 
of  the  moonlight,  the  gentle  zephyrs,  and  flirta- 
tious communion.  The  approach  to  it  from  the 
Mt.  Vernon  Street  side  was  through  a  turnstile 
to  a  flight  of  steps  leading  part  way  up  and  join- 
ing a  broad  path  in  which  convenient  footholds 
had  been  worn.  The  way  from  Derne  and 
Temple  streets  was  direct  to  the  monument  by 
Beacon  Steps,  so  called.  The  hill  cutting  begin- 
ning in  1811  occupied  a  dozen  years,  and  was 
fittingly  called  "the  great  digging."  To-day  the 
cutting  into  the  park  to  make  way  for  the  twen- 
tieth-century State  House  wing,  occupies,  with  the 
employment  of  the  steam  shovel  in  place  of  the 
hand-digger,  not  much  more  than  a  dozen  days. 
With  the  completion  of  this  wing,  and  its  com- 
panion on  the  west  side,  greater  changes  will  have 
been  effected  in  this  quarter;  and,  alas!  Beacon 
Hill,  which  now  alone  retains  in  its  richness  the 
old  Boston  flavor,  will  have  lost  more  of  its 
earlier  charm. 


[145] 


VI 

THE  WATER  FRONT 

WE  traced  the  old  Town  front  of  the  "con- 
venient harbor"  as  best  we  could,  through 
a  ramble  along  the  present  marginal  thoroughfares 
of  Commercial  Street  and  Atlantic  Avenue,  be- 
tween Copp's  Hill  at  the  north  and  the  site  of 
Fort  Hill  at  the  south.  Between  these  bounds, 
and  within  "two  strong  arms"  reaching  out  at 
either  end  of  the  Great  Cove,  the  inner  harbor 
lay  through  Colony  and  Province  days.  The 
strong  arms  were  the  North  Battery  on  "Merry's 
Point"  at  the  foot  of  Copp's  Hill,  and  the  Boston 
Sconce,  or  South  Battery,  on  a  point  jutting  out 
from  Fort  Hill.  The  North  Battery  commanded 
the  mouth  of  Charles  River;  the  Sconce  protected 
the  sea  entrance.  An  additional  defense  at  the 
sea  end  was  a  fort  on  the  summit  of  Fort  Hill, 
while  the  "Castle",  on  Castle  Island,  where  now 
Fort  Independence  Park  is  connected  with  the 
Marine  Park  system  on  South  Boston  Point,  was 

[147] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

the  outer  protector.  Of  these  defenses  the  fort 
on  Fort  Hill  was  first  erected,  begun  in  the  Town's 
second  year;  the  Castle  next,  in  1634;  then  the 
North  Battery,  in  1646;  and  lastly  the  Sconce, 
in  1666.  Seven  years  later,  in  1673,  these  bat- 
teries were  connected  by  a  "Barricado",  a  sea 
wall  and  wharf  of  timber  and  stones,  built  in  a 
straight  line  upon  the  flats  before  the  Town  across 
the  mouth  of  the  Great  Cove,  with  openings  at 
intervals  to  allow  vessels  to  pass  inside  to  the 
town  docks.  Its  purpose  was  primarily  to  secure 
the  Town  from  fire  ships,  in  case  of  the  approach 
of  an  enemy;  but  it  was  also  intended  for  wharf- 
age, and  it  came  early  to  be  called  the  "Out 
Wharves."  As  a  defense,  the  Barricado  proved 
needless,  for  no  hostile  ship  ever  passed  the  Castle 
till  the  Revolution;  it  began  to  fall  into  decay 
early  in  the  Province  period,  although  it  was  re- 
tained for  some  years  longer.  The  batteries, 
however,  were  steadily  kept  up  and  supplied  with 
sufficient  forces  of  men,  till  the  Revolution  was 
over.  These  were  the  defenses  of  Colony  days. 
In  the  Province  period,  a  battery  was  planted  at 
the  tip  end  of  Long  Wharf,  the  great  pier  stretch- 
ing into  the  harbor  nearly  half  a    mile,    built    in 

[  148  ] 


The  Water  Front 

1710,  and  the  wonder  of  its  day.  Bennett,  in 
1740,  found  this  battery  here.  The  North  Battery 
is  now  marked  by  Battery  Wharf  on  Commercial 
Street  at  the  foot  of  Battery  Street;  the  Sconce, 
by  Rowe's  Wharf,  at  the  foot  of  Broad  Street; 
the  Barricado,  by  Atlantic  Avenue,  which  fol- 
lows generally  its  line;  while  Fort  Hill  is  repre- 
sented by  Independence  Square — or  Fort  Hill 
Square,  as  the  official  title  is — and  reached  from 
Rowe's  Wharf  and  Atlantic  Avenue  through  nar- 
row old  Belcher  Lane,  dating  back  to  the  sixteen 
sixties,  the  "Sconce  Lane"  of  early  Province  days. 
The  harbor  front  of  Old  Boston,  therefore,  ex- 
tended from  hill  to  hill,  a  distance  of  less  than  a 
mile,  as  the  Englishman  was  shown  by  the 
Boston:  A  Guide  Book  map  when  given  the  fore- 
going details.  Meanwhile  the  Artist  had  produced 
a  copy  of  the  familiar  picture  by  Paul  Revere — 
"A  View  of  Part  of  the  Town  of  Boston  in  New 
England  and  British  Ships  of  War  Landing  their 
Troops,  1768" — which  represents  the  water  front 
of  the  Province  period  in  more  definite  detail 
and  in  livelier  manner  than  any  other  sketch 
or  map  of  its  time.  Of  the  front's  appearance  in 
Colony  days  there  is  no  picture. 

[  149  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

We  enter  the  present  front  between  the  old 
bounds  from  the  North  End  Terrace  opposite  the 
Charter-street  side  of  Copp's  Hill  Burying-ground, 
and  so  toward  the  North  End  Beach.  Thus  from 
the  terrace  we  have  a  view  across  the  river  to 
the  Navy  Yard;  while  beside  the  beach,  artificially 
restored  a  few  years  ago,  we  are  close  by  the 
supposed  landing  place  of  Winthrop's  company 
moving  over  from  Charlestown,  and  especially  of 
Anne  Pollard,  then  a  "romping  girl",  who,  ac- 
cording to  legend,  was  the  first  of  all,  or  rather 
the  first  "female",  to  spring  ashore.  This  pre- 
sumed first  landing  place  was  below  Hudson's 
Point,  then  near  the  junction  of  Charter  and 
Commercial  streets,  east  of  Charles  River  Bridge, 
and  the  extreme  northwest  point  of  the  Town.  It 
got  its  name  from  Francis  Hudson,  a  worthy  fish- 
erman, one  of  the  early  ferrymen  of  the  Charles- 
town  ferry,  which  plied  from  this  point.  Turning 
southeastward,  along  Commercial  Street,  we  soon 
come  upon  the  ancient  Winnisimmet-Chelsea- 
Ferry,  at  the  foot  of  Hanover  Street,  one  of  the 
forgotten  memorials  of  two  centuries  back.  In 
spite  of  attempts  to  abolish  it,  this  institution 
still  lives  and  ferries  in  a  mild  way. 

[  150] 


Old  Loft  Buildings,  Commercial  Wharf. 


1 


L 


The  Water  Front 

Next  beyond  the  fern'  entrance  we  are  at  old 
Constitution  Wharf,  and  read  the  Inscription  on  a 
stout  brass  plate  attached  to  the  face  of  the  heavy 
brick  warehouse  on  the  sidewalk  line:  "Here  was 
built  the  Frigate  Constitution.  Old  Ironsides.'' 
That  was  in  1 794-1 797.  Here  was  then  the  great 
shipyard  of  Edmund  Hartt,  one  of  three  broth- 
ers—  all  Boston  shipwrights.  The  capabilities  of 
Boston  at  that  time  for  the  construction  and 
equipment  of  ships  as  exemplified  in  the  building 
of  this  famous  battle  frigate  are  remarked  by  the 
local  historians.  The  copper,  bolts,  and  spikes, 
drawn  from  malleable  copper  by  a  process  then 
new,  were  furnished  from  Paul  Revere's  works. 
The  sails  were  of  Boston  manufactured  sail  cloth, 
and  were  made  in  the  old  Granary  building.  The 
cordage  came  from  Boston  ropewalks,  of  which 
there  were  then  fourteen  in  the  Town.  The  gun- 
carriages  were  made  in  a  Boston  shop.  Only  the 
anchors  and  the  timber  were  "  imported."  The 
anchors  were  from  the  town  of  Hanover,  Ply- 
mouth County;  the  oak  from  Massachusetts  and 
New  Hampshire  woods.  Subsequently,  Hartt 
built  other  ships  for  the  young  American  navy 
before    government    dockyards    were    established, 

[  153  1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

and  his  place  came  to  be  called  "Hartt's  Naval 
Yard."  Notable  among  these  productions  was 
the  frigate  Boston,  launched  in  1799,  so  named 
because  she  was  provided  for  by  subscription  of 
Boston  merchants  and  was  a  free  gift  to  the 
government.  Another  was  the  brig  Argus,  built 
in  1800,  which  distinguished  herself  in  the  War 
of  18 12,  but  was  finally  captured  by  an  English 
war  brig  of  twenty-one  guns  against  her  sixteen. 
Warships  were  built  in  other  Boston  yards  about 
Copp's  Hill  before  the  Constitution  was  turned  out. 
The  first  seventy-four  gun  ship  built  in  the  coun- 
try, ordered  by  the  Continental  Congress,  was 
laid  in  Benjamin  Goodwin's  yard,  near  the  North 
Battery.  Forty  years  earlier  the  Massachusetts 
Frigate  was  built  for  the  province,  in  Joshua  Gee's 
yard,  at  the  foot  of  the  hill,  not  far  from  Snowhill 
Street.  She  was  designed  for  Sir  William  Pep- 
perell's  expedition  against  Louisburg  in  1745 

At  that  period  Joshua  Gee's  was  one  of  several 
thriving  shipyards  in  this  neighborhood,  turning 
out  all  sorts  of  vessels.  In  1759  six  were  recorded 
as  clustering  about  the  base  of  Copp's  Hill;  while 
two  were  at  the  other  end  of  the  water  front 
below    Fort    Hill.      In    Colony    days,    yards    here 

1 154] 


The  last  of  the  Fishing  Fleet  at  old  T  Wharf. 


/ 


The  Water  Front 

were  almost  as  numerous.  Two  or  three  were 
producing  handsome  ships  for  foreign  trade  so 
early  as  the  sixteen  forties  and  fifties.  Conven- 
iently close  by  were  famous  taverns.  There  was 
the  Ship  Tavern,  or  Noah's  Ark,  on  the  corner 
of  North,  then  Ann,  and  Clark  streets,  dating 
back  to  before  1650,  and  lingering  as  a  landmark 
till  the  eighteen  sixties.  And  the  Salutation  Tav- 
ern, or  the  Two  Palaverers,  from  the  sign  of  two 
painted  gentlemen  in  small  clothes  and  cocked 
hats  greeting  each  other,  on  Salutation  Alley  from 
Hanover  Street  to  Commercial  Street,  of  later 
date  than  the  Ship. 

When  the  keel  of  the  Constitution  was  being 
laid,  in  November,  1794,  Pemberton  writes,  in 
his  "Description  of  Boston":  "The  harbor  of 
Boston  is  at  this  date  crowded  with  vessels. 
Eighty-four  sail  have  been  counted  lying  at  two 
of  the  wharves  only.  It  is  reckoned  that  not  less 
than  four  hundred  and  fifty  sail  of  ships,  brigs, 
schooners,  and  sloops  and  small  craft  are  now  in 
port."  As  for  shipbuilding,  he  tells  of  its  having 
formerly  been  carried  on  at  upwards  of  twenty- 
seven  dockyards  at  one  and  the  same  time.  He 
was   credibly   informed,   he   wrote,   that   in   all   of 

[  157] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

these  yards  there  had  been  more  than  sixty  vessels 
on  the  stocks  at  one  time.  Many,  when  built, 
were  sent  directly  to  London  with  naval  stores, 
whale  oil,  etc.,  and  to  the  West  Indies  with 
fish  and  lumber  and  rum.  The  whale  and  cod 
fishery  employed  many  of  the  smaller  craft. 
"They  were  nurseries  and  produced  many  hardy 
seamen,"  Pemberton  truly  says. 

We  pass  Battery  Wharf,  now  a  steamship  pier; 
pass  the  entrance  to  the  East  Boston  North 
Ferryways;  other  wharves,  now  steamship  piers; 
Eastern  Avenue,  leading  to  the  East  Boston  South 
Ferry;  then,  at  Lewis  Wharf,  pause  a  moment 
to  drop  into  history  a  bit.  For  here,  on  what  is 
now  its  north  side,  was  Hancock's  Wharf  of 
Province  days,  and  earlier  Clark's,  the  most  im- 
portant wharf  on  the  water  front  till  after  the 
building  of  Long  Wharf  in  1710.  And  here  was 
where  the  Great  Cove  started  on  the  north  side, 
carrying  high-water  mark  originally  up  our  State 
Street  to  the  line  of  Merchants  Row  and  Kilby 
Street,  as  we  remarked  on  our  initial  ramble. 

The  wharf  was  first  Thomas  Hancock's,  then 
John  Hancock's  by  inheritance.  John  Hancock's 
warehouse  was  upon  it,  while  his  store  was  at  the 

[  158] 


A  Bit  of  old  Long  Wharf. 


/ 


%:*'   r|    X:r-    '' 


"''.'4^' 


»j 


The  Water  Front 

head  of  what  is  now  South  Market  Street;  or,  as 
described  in  an  advertisement  in  the  Boston 
\ing  Post  of  December,  1764,  '; Store  Xo.  4 
at  the  East  End  o:  Faneuil  Hall  Market."  Here 
he  was  offering  for  sale  "A  general  Assortment  of 
English  and  India  Goods,  also  choice  Xewcas:.e 
Coals  and  Irish  Butter,  cheap  for  Cash."  Iz 
at  this  wharf  that  one  of  the  British  regiments 
landed  in  July.  1768,  is  in  Paul  Reveres  picture. 
In  the  previous  June  occurred  the  performance 
of  the  unloading  in  the  night  of  a  cargo  of  wines 
from  the  sloop  Liberty  from  Madeira,  belonging 
to  John  Hancock,  without  paying  the  customs, 
while  the  "tidewaiter"  upon  going  aboard  the 
ship,  was  seized  by  a  ship  captain  and  others 
following  him,  and  confined  below.  Riotous  pro- 
ceedings followed  the  next  day,  upon  the  seizure 
of  the  sloop  and  upon  its  mooring  for  safety  under 
the  guns  of  a  British  warship  in  the  harbor.  The 
incensed  populace  turned  upon  the  revenue  offi- 
cers, smashed  the  windows  of  the  house  of  the 
comptroller  on  Hanover  S::ee:  near  by;  and  finally 
dragged  the  collector's  boat  to  the  Common  and 
there  burnt  it  in  a  bonfire.  Ha::::;:  ~  ;:::-- 
cured  upon  this  and  many  other  libels  for  penal- 

1 161 1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

ties  upon  acts  of  Parliament,  amounting,  it  is  said, 
to  ninety  or  a  hundred  thousand  pounds  sterling. 
On  Commercial  Wharf  we  note  the  side  range  of 
low-studded,  heavy  granite  buildings,  typical  of 
the  early  nineteenth-century  merchants'  counting- 
houses  that  customarily  lined  the  principal  wharves. 
Here  we  enter  the  water-front  market  region. 

At  T  Wharf,  now  the  old  fish  pier,  we  are  at 
what  was  originally  a  part  of  the  Barricado  of 
1672.  The  neck  of  the  T  connecting  it  with  Long 
Wharf  we  are  told  is  of  that  structure.  T  is  the 
oldest  of  the  present  wharves.  Andrew  Faneuil 
and  Stephen  Minott  are  of  record  as  owners  in 
171 8;  but  Minott  was  an  earlier  owner,  and  the 
wharf  was  for  some  time  called  "Minott's  T." 
With  the  fleet  of  fisher  boats  moored  at  its  side, 
it  is  the  most  picturesque  and  animated  of  all 
the  wharves  in  the  line.  Its  glory  is  passing  now, 
however,  with  the  shift  of  fishing  interests  to  the 
new  docks  of  the  great  Commonwealth  Pier  on  the 
South  Boston  side.  Long  Wharf  is  the  aristocrat 
of  the  line.  It  was  projected  in  1707,  when  the 
flats  of  the  Great  Cove  had  been  filled  on  King 
Street  below  Merchants  Row  to  about  where 
now  is  the  Custom  House, — a  pier  to  extend  from 

[  162] 


The  JVater  Front 

the  then  foot  of  the  street  to  low-water  mark, 
some  seventeen  hundred  feet  out;  and  the  scheme 
was  carried  through  by  a  group  of  merchants  as 
a  private  enterprise.  Daniel  Xeal  thus  described 
it  in  1 719,  nine  years  after  its  completion:  a 
"  noble  Pier,  eighteen  hundred  or  two  thousand 
Foot  long,  with  a  Row  of  Ware-houses  on  the 
North  side  for  the  use  of  Merchants",  running 
"so  far  into  the  Bay  that  Ships  of  the  greatest 
Burthen  may  unlade  without  the  help  of  Boats 
or  Lighters."  This  description  practically  held 
good  till  after  the  Revolution  and  into  the  nine- 
teenth century.  It  was  not  till  the  eighteen 
fifties  that  the  pier  was  largely  widened  and  the 
range  of  heavy  granite  buildings  below  the  Custom 
House,  known  as  State  Street  Block,  was  erected 
in  the  place  where  ships  formerly  lay.  At  first 
called  Boston  Pier,  its  name  in  time  became  Long 
Wharf  because  it  was  "supposed  to  be  the  longest 
wharf  on  the  continent."  Through  Province  days 
it  was  the  place  of  landing  and  official  reception 
of  all  distinguished  arrivals.  The  royal  governors, 
from  Shute  to  Gage,  at  their  coming  landed  here 
and  were  formally  received,  and  escorted  by  the 
local    military    companies    up    King    Street    to    the 

1 163  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

Town  House.  Here  the  main  body  of  the  troops 
embarked  for  the  Bunker  Hill  Battle  on  Breed's 
Hill;  and  hence  departed  the  army  and  the  royal- 
ists at  the  Evacuation.  The  first  house  set  up  at 
the  head  of  the  pier  was  a  tavern — the  Crown 
Coffee  House.  Neighboring  water  resorts  early 
followed,  to  become  historic  inns.  There  was 
first  the  Bunch  of  Grapes  on  the  west  corner  of 
Kilby  Street,  begun  before  1712;  later,  the  British 
Coffee  House,  nearly  opposite;  and  the  Admiral 
Vernon,  named  in  honor  of  Edward  Vernon,  the 
English  admiral,  on  the  lower  corner  of  Mer- 
chants Row.  The  Bunch  of  Grapes  was  the  tav- 
ern which  the  jovial  young  merchant  of  New 
York,  Captain  Francis  Goelet,  here  in  1750,  de- 
scribed in  his  journal  recording  his  entertainment 
by  the  bucks  of  the  town,  as  the  "best  punch 
house  in  Boston",  which  vinous  sobriquet  it 
retained  through  its  long  career.  In  pre-Revolu- 
tionary  days  it  was  the  chosen  resort  of  the 
patriot  leaders,  while  the  British  Coffee  House 
was  the  rendezvous  of  the  British  officers.  Near 
the  head  of  the  pier  were  the  warehouses  of  the 
Faneuils — Andrew,  Peter,  and  Benjamin.  When 
the  Custom  House  was   built,   in   183 7-1 847 — the 

[  164] 


The  Water  Front 

low,  granite-pillared,  Greek-like  structure  from 
whose  modest  dome  springs  the  towering  pyramid 
that  now  dominates  the  sky  line — it  stood  at  the 
head  of  the  wharf  with  the  bowsprits  of  vessels 
lying  there  stretching  across  the  street  almost 
touching  its  eastern  part.  It  is  an  interesting  tradi- 
tion, by  the  way,  that  on  the  site  of  the  Custom 
House  lived  a  cooper  who  turned  out  to  have  been 
a  leader  of  the  Fifth  Monarchy  Men. 

Central  and  India  wharves,  now  piers  of  Maine 
and  of  New  York  steamboat  lines,  are  among  the 
oldest,  as  they  are  the  finest,  of  the  present 
wharves  of  this  front.  Central,  with  its  range  of 
more  than  fifty  stores,  dates  from  1816;  India, 
with  a  row  of  sixty  odd,  from  1806.  Central 
Wharf  was  laid  out  originally  over  a  part  of  the 
Barricado  structure  then  still  remaining.  Near  its 
head,  on  Custom  House  Street,  the  Old  Custom 
House,  predecessor  of  the  present  one,  erected  in 
1 8 10,  yet  stands,  stripped,  however,  of  the  archi- 
tectural adornments  of  its  facade,  and  of  the 
spread  eagle  which  once  topped  the  pediment. 
The  old  building  has  a  pleasant  literary  interest 
as  the  Custom  House  of  George  Bancroft  and 
Nathaniel    Hawthorne's    time, — Bancroft    as    col- 

[  165  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

lector,  Hawthorne  in  the  humbler  post  of  weigher 
and  gauger.  Of  the  "Tea  Party  Wharf"  or  of  its 
successor  —  Griffin's  in  the  tea-ship's  time,  later 
Liverpool  Wharf  —  no  vestige  remains,  our  guest 
was  told.  With  curious  interest  he  read  the 
elaborate  inscription  reciting  the  story,  beneath 
the  model  of  a  tea-ship,  on  the  tablet  attached 
to  a  building  on  the  north  corner  of  the  avenue 
and  Pearl  Street.  This  tablet  marks  the  wharf's 
site  only  in  a  general  way. 

Rowe's  Wharf,  now  a  popular  harbor  steam- 
boats' pier,  dates  back  to  before  1764,  and  origi- 
nally was  on  the  northerly  side  of  Sconce,  after- 
ward Belcher,  Lane.  Here  we  turn  from  the 
avenue,  and  entering  Belcher  Lane,  finish  our 
ramble  in  Fort  Hill  Square,  the  poplars  of 
which  we  see  at  the  end  of  the  vista.  As  we 
loiter  in  this  serene  little  park  in  the  heart  of  a 
busy  wholesale  quarter,  we  note  that  it  marks  the 
lines  of  a  plot  on  the  summit  of  the  hill  that 
rose  a  hundred  feet  above,  within  which  had  stood 
the  fort  that  gave  the  hill  its  name,  and  the 
larger  fort  that  succeeded  the  first  one,  in  which 
Andros  found  refuge  in  April,  1689,  when  the 
townspeople  rose  against  and  overthrew  him.    Till 

[  166] 


The  Water  Front 

after  the  Revolution  the  summit  was  open  ground, 
and  in  Province  days  a  public  mall.  Here  the 
anti-Stamp  Act  mob  of  1765  had  their  bonfire 
of  the  wreckage  of  the  Stamp  office  on  Kilby 
Street,  and  of  the  fence  of  the  stamp  master's, 
Andrew  Oliver,  place  on  the  hillside,  in  sight  of 
his  mansion.  Here  an  ox  was  roasted  for  the 
people's  feast  at  the  celebration  of  the  news  of 
the  French  Revolution.  The  slopes  of  the  hill 
became  favorite  dwelling  places  in  early  Colony 
days,  and  in  Province  days  some  fine  seats  occu- 
pied the  hillside.  In  the  latter  eighteenth  and  the 
early  nineteenth  century  the  approach  was  marked 
by  terraced  gardens  reaching  to  the  hill  top.  In 
the  eighteen  thirties  the  plot  on  the  summit  was 
laid  out  as  Washington  Square,  a  circular  green 
adorned  with  noble  trees  and  surrounded  by  a 
street  of  genteel  dwellings.  In  course  of  time  its 
prosperity  waned,  and  the  genteel  dwellings 
became  squalid  tenements.  Then  Fort  Hill  fell 
into  ignoble  decay.  It  remained,  however,  till 
the  last  of  the  eighteen  sixties.  Its  leveling  was 
begun  in  1869,  but  the  process  was  slow,  and  the 
ancient  landmark  did  not  wholly  disappear  till 
after  the  "Great  Boston  Fire"  of  1872. 

[  167] 


VII 

OLD  SOUTH,  KING'S  CHAPEL,  AND  NEIGHBORHOOD 

ALTHOUGH  both  buildings  are  eighteenth- 
century  structures,  we  presented  the  Old 
South  Meeting-house  and  King's  Chapel  to  our 
Englishman  as  monuments,  respectively,  of  the 
Colony  and  of  the  Province.  In  this  classification 
the  Old  South  was  assumed  to  stand  for  Puritan 
Boston,  King's  Chapel  for  the  Boston  of  the 
regime  of  the  royal  governors.  Architecturally, 
also,  they  might  be  taken  as  representing  the  two 
epochs.  The  Old  South  preserves  the  matured 
type  of  the  Puritan  meeting-house;  the  Chapel  is 
of  the  old  Church  of  England  pattern,  introduced 
with  the  establishment  of  the  Province.  The 
meeting-house,  dating  from  1729,  is  the  second 
South  Church  (the  meeting-house  of  the  Third 
Church  of  Boston),  the  first  having  been  erected 
in  1670;  the  chapel,  dating  from  1749-1754,  is  the 
successor  of  that  first  King's  Chapel,  erected  in 
1688,    for    the    site    of    which    Andros    assigned    a 

1 169] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

corner  of  the  old  First  Burying-ground,  when  no 
Puritan  landholder  would  agree  to  sell  a  lot  for 
such  a  purpose. 

—  T> 

The  Old  South  we  were  gratified  to  show  off  to 
our  guest  with  the  exterior  fully  restored  to  its 
original  aspect,  thus  adding  much  to  its  pictur- 
esqueness  as  well  as  to  its  historical  worth.  Most 
satisfying  was  the  restored  Wren-like  spire,  which 
was  quite  likely  modeled,  though  not  directly 
copied,  from  the  first  one,  of  similar  style,  on 
Christ  Church,  erected  some  five  years  before, 
and  which  has  been  called  more  imposing  than 
that.  Indeed  it  has  been  pronounced  by  that 
master-critic,  Richard  Grant  White,  the  finest  of 
its  kind,  not  only  in  this  country  but  in  the  world, 
unequaled  in  grace  and  lightness  by  any  spire  of 
Sir  Christopher's  that  he  had  seen.  A  peculiar 
interest  attaches  to  it,  as  he  says,  because  it  is 
not  an  imitation  of  anything  but  is  of  home 
growth,  the  conception  of  a  Yankee  architect  — 
the  development  of  the  steeple-belfry  of  the  New 
England  meeting-house. 

The  historic  structure  permanently  fixed,  like 
the  Old  State  House,  and  maintained  solely  as  a 
memorial,  is  now,  as  we  had  remarked,  counted  one 

[  170  ] 


Old  South  and  King  s  Chapel 

of  the  valuable  assets  of  the  city  by  all  classes  of 
Bostonians.  Yet  its  "saving",  after  its  abandon- 
ment for  church  uses,  was  a  task  more  difficult 
of  accomplishment  than  that  of  rescuing  the  Old 
State  House  from  the  destroyer,  when  it  was  no 
longer  useful:  for  in  this  case  the  property  had 
to  be  purchased  outright  by  citizens  for  reserva- 
tion, while  in  that,  as  we  have  seen,  the  city  at 
first  and  finally  the  city  in  conjunction  with  the 
state  assumed  the  financial  burden.  Though 
more  arduous,  however,  it  was  as  valiant  a  fight. 
And  it  was  a  more  spectacular  one,  in  that  it  was 
a  woman's  fight.  It  was  carried  through  by  a 
committee  of  twenty-five  Boston  matrons  and 
maids  under  the  direction  of  a  small  staff  of  com- 
petent men  of  affairs,  in  the  centennial  year  of 
1876.  The  campaign  was  begun  in  earnest,  after 
some  preliminary  skirmishing,  when  the  building 
had  been  auctioned  off  as  junk  for  thirteen  hun- 
dred and  fifty  dollars  and  its  demolition  was  im- 
minent; and  it  ended  in  victory  with  the  contri- 
bution of  one  Boston  woman,  much  the  largest 
single  subscription,  completing  the  purchase  fund 
at  a  critical  moment  when  the  option  was  about 
to  expire.     Before  the  restoration  of  the  exterior 

[  171  1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

was  undertaken,  the  interior  was  refashioned  as 
far  as  possible  to  its  appearance  in  the  Revolu- 
tionary period,  when  it  was  the  scene  of  those 
great,  sometimes  tumultuous,  Town  meetings,  for 
the  accommodation  of  which  Faneuil  Hall  was 
too  small,  that  "kindled  the  flame  which  fired 
the  Revolution";  and  that  were  of  such  fame  in 
England  as  to  inspire  Burke,  in  imaging  an  un- 
usual tumult  in  Parliament,  to  the  declaration 
that  it  was  "as  hot  as  Faneuil  Hall  or  the  Old 
South  Church  in  Boston."  Here  we  find  a  pop- 
ular museum  of  Revolutionary,  Provincial,  and 
Colonial  relics,  old  furniture,  and  portraits  of 
Boston  worthies.  The  auditorium  is  now  used 
for  the  institution  known  as  the  "Old  South  Lec- 
tures to  Young  People"  founded  by  Mrs.  Mary 
Hemenway,  the  matron  who  subscribed  the 
largest    amount   to   the   preservation   fund. 

The  Old  South  has  further  interest,  Antiquary 
recalled,  as  marking  the  site  of  the  last  dwelling- 
place  of  Governor  Winthrop.  It  stands  on  what 
was  the  "Governor's  Green",  the  Winthrop  lot, 
so  picturesquely  called,  extending  along  the  "High 
Wave"  between  "Spring-gate"  (Spring  Lane)  and 
Milk  Street,  upon  which  was  placed  the  governor's 

[  172  ] 


Old  South  and  Kings  Chapel 

second  mansion-house,  the  house  of  choice  memo- 
ries from  its  association  with  Winthrop's  closing 
years  —  the  last  five  or  six  of  his  eventful  life. 
The  meeting-house  occupies  the  garden  end  of 
the  Green,  while  the  mansion-house  stood  toward 
the  north  end  facing  the  garden.  The  mansion 
had  been  erected  in  1643,  when  Winthrop  had 
disposed  of  his  first  one,  that  on  our  State  Street, 
which  he  had  occupied  through  the  first  twelve 
years  of  his  Boston  life.  Winthrop  died,  after 
a  month's  slow  illness  developing  from  a  hard 
Boston  spring  cold,  on  April  5  (March  26,  1648, 
O.  S.),  1649,  in  his  sixty-third  year  and  the 
Town's  nineteenth.  As  his  peaceful  end  ap- 
proached, "the  whole  church  fasted  as  well  as 
prayed  for  him."  The  funeral  solemnity  was  ap- 
pointed for  a  week  and  a  day  from  his  death,  in 
order  to  give  Governor  John,  Jr.,  of  Connecticut, 
time  for  the  then  long  journey  from  Hartford  to 
Boston.  Some  years  after  the  governor's  death, 
the  Green  and  the  mansion  came  into  the  owner- 
ship of  Parson  John  Norton  of  the  First  Church, 
one  of  the  great  ministers  of  his  day,  and  of  more 
liberal  mind  than  some  of  his  brethren;  and  upon 
his    death    the    property    passed    to    his    widow. 

[  173  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

The  Third  Church  organized  in  1669  was  formed 
by  seceders  from  the  First  Church,  who  split  with 
that  church  chiefly  on  the  burning  issue  of  the 
baptismal,  or  "Half- Way",  Covenant  which  they 
espoused,  and  Madam  Norton,  being  one  of  the 
seceders,  gave  the  garden  plot  in  trust  for  the  place 
of  the  new  meeting-house.  A  few  years  later  the 
remainder  of  the  Green  was  conveyed  to  the  new 
society;  then  the  mansion-house  became  the  par- 
sonage and  so  remained  for  almost  a  century.  The 
mansion  survived  as  an  honored  landmark  through 
to  the  Revolution,  when  the  British  soldiery  pulled 
it  down  for  use  as  firewood  during  the  winter  of 
the  Siege,  along  with  a  row  of  butternuts  that 
shaded  the  venerable  rooftree,  while  this  present 
meeting-house  was  being  utilized  for  the  exercise 
of  the  cavalry  horses. 

The  first  meeting-house,  the  erection  of  1670, 
has  been  described  as  a  little  house  of  cedar, 
though  " spacious  and  fair"  to  Puritan  eyes,  with 
a  steeple,  and  porches  on  the  front  and  two  sides. 
In  this  meeting-house,  on  a  July  Sunday  afternoon 
of  1677,  occurred  in  sermon  time  that  startling 
visitation  of  a  Quakeress  —  Margaret  Brewster 
—  arrayed  in  the  Biblical  "sackcloth  and  ashes", 

[  174] 


Old  South  and  Kings  Chapel 

her  face  blackened  and  her  feet  bare,  —  or  as 
Sewall,  the  Boston  Pepys,  described:  "covered 
with  a  Canvas  Frock,  having  her  hair  dishevelled 
and  Loose,  and  powdered  with  Ashes  resembling 
a  flaxen  or  white  Periwigg,  her  face  as  black  as 
Ink",  —  led  by  two  other  Quakers  and  followed 
by  two  more.  After  delivering  to  the  amazed 
congregation  a  solemn  warning  of  the  coming  of 
the  black  pox  upon  the  Town  in  punishment  for 
its  persecution  of  the  sect,  she  slipped  out  as 
quietly  as  she  had  entered.  No  wonder  the  per- 
formance occasioned,  as  Sewall  records,  "a  great 
and  very  amazing  Uproar."  But  the  penalty 
was  speedy,  for  the  daring  zealot  was  straight- 
way "whipt  at  the  cart's  tail  up  and  down  the 
Town  with  thirty  lashes."  This  was  the  meeting- 
house, the  orthodox  doors  of  which  Andros  in 
1686  commanded  opened  a  part  of  each  Sunday 
to  the  pioneer  Episcopal  church  that  Randolph 
had  set  up  in  the  Town  House.  It  was  here  that 
the  burial  service  over  Lady  Andros,  the  gov- 
ernor's American  wife,  who  died  less  than  three 
months  after  their  coming  to  Boston,  was  given 
according  to  the  Episcopal  form,  in  the  night 
time,  when  the  sombre  Puritan  interior  was  weirdly 

[  175] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

illuminated  with  candles  and  flaming  torches,  and 
torch  bearers  lighted  the  procession,  with  the 
"hearse  drawn  by  six  horses",  to  the  tomb  in 
the  First  Burying-ground.  And  this  was  the  meet- 
ing-house in  which  on  January  17  (sixth,  O.  S.), 
1706,  Benjamin  Franklin,  born  that  same  day,  in 
a  little  house  across  the  way  on  Milk  Street 
(marked  by  the  building  Number  17)  was  bap- 
tized. This  first  South  took  on  the  name  of  Old 
South  in  1717,  not  because  of  its  age,  but  to  dis- 
tinguish it  from  the  New  South  that  year  erected 
in  Summer  Street,  where  was  Church  Green. 
The  first  house  was  taken  down  to  make  way  for 
this  one,  which  occupies  its  exact  site.  The 
modern  business  block  —  the  Old  South  Building 
—  towering  around  the  meeting-house  marks  the 
remainder  of  the  Governor's  Green. 

Now  we  turned  to  neighboring  landmarks. 
First  we  gave  a  passing  glance  to  the  little  old 
building  on  the  north  corner  of  School  Street 
nearly  opposite  the  meeting-house.  This  is  yet, 
it  was  remarked,  a  valued  landmark,  but  a  land- 
mark gone  to  seed.  It  dates  from  1712,  and  is 
supposed  to  have  been  the  first  of  the  brick 
houses  erected  in  the  rebuilding  of  a  better  Corn- 

[  176] 


Old  South  and  King  s  Chapel 

hill  (as  this  part  of  Washington  Street,  our  guest 
was  reminded,  then  was)  after  that  "great  fire" 
of  171 1,  which  swept  through  this  quarter  and 
destroyed  the  First  Church  meeting-house  and 
the  Town  House.  It  is  interesting  as  a  type  of 
the  building  of  that  day,  battered  though  it  is 
by  time  and  repeated  makings-over  for  business. 
In  its  mature  years  it  was  long  cherished  as  the 
"Old  Corner  Bookstore",  rich. in  memories  of  the 
golden  age  of  Boston  letters,  but  now,  alas! 
sadly  fallen  to  grosser  trades.  It  marks,  or  nearly 
marks,  the  site  of  a  house  of  larger  historical  im- 
port. This  was  the  Hutchinson  homestead,  the 
dwelling  of  Mistress  Ann  Hutchinson,  that  supe- 
rior Boston  matron  "of  a  ready  wit  and  bold 
spirit,"  about  whom  waged  the  fierce  "Antino- 
mian  Controversy"  of  1637-1638,  forerunner  of 
the  warfare  against  the  Anabaptists  and  the 
Quakers,  which  nearly  split  the  Colony.  The  out- 
come was  Mistress  Ann's  conviction  for  "traducing 
the  ministers  and  their  ministry  in  the  country" 
by  advocating  the  doctrine  of  the  "covenant 
of  faith"  as  above  that  of  the  "covenant  of 
works"  which  the  ministers  preached;  her  banish- 
ment together  with  high  colonial  leaders;  and  the 

[  177  1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 


disfranchisement  or  disarming  of  nearly  a  hun- 
dred more  of  her  adherents  or  sympathizers.  She 
was  the  first  introducer  of  the  woman  question 
in  America,  with  the  institution  of  meetings  of 
Boston  women  to  discuss  the  Sunday  sermons 
after  the  manner  of  the  men  members  of  the 
Boston  church.  These  meetings  were  held  in 
the  parlor  of  her  house,  and  at  first  weekly. 
Soon  they  came  twice  a  week  and  were  attended 
by  nearly  a  hundred  of  the  principal  women, 
numbers  coming  from  the  neighboring  towns. 
One  of  the  circle  was  the  sweet-natured  Mary 
Dyar,  who  was  of  the  Quakers  executed  in  Boston 
twenty  years  later.  The  discussions  under  the 
earnest  and  remarkably  able  leadership  of  Mis- 
tress Ann  became  so  frank  and  so  critical  that 
the  orthodox  party  was  scandalized.  And  when 
her  doctrine  of  the  justification  of  faith  without 
works  had  grown  in  popularity,  or  when  all  of 
the  Boston  church  except  five  members  proved 
to  be  sympathizers  with  her,  their  consternation 
was  great.  The  story  of  the  tragic  end  of  Mis- 
tress Hutchinson  —  killed  with  all  her  family  ex- 
cept a  daughter,  in  a  general  massacre  of  Dutch 
and    English    by   the    Indians    in    1643,    on    Long 

[  178] 


Old  South  and  Kings  Chapel 

Island,  where  she  had  finally  established  her  home 
—  is  an  often  told  tale. 

On  the  path  back  of  the  Governor's  Green, 
which  became  Pudding  Lane,  dwelt  another  colo- 
nial matron  who  also  came  under  the  ban,  but 
for  a  far  different  cause  than  Mistress  Hutchinson, 
and  who  suffered  tragically.  She  was  Mrs.  Ann 
Hibbins,  gentlewoman,  sister  of  Governor  Bel- 
lingham  and  wife  of  William  Hibbins,  a  merchant, 
and  an  important  man  in  early  Town  and  Colony 
affairs,  sometime  member  of  the  Court  of  Assist- 
ants, later  the  Colony's  agent  to  England.  She 
was  a  widow  when  trouble  came  upon  her.  She 
had  a  clever  but  sharp  tongue,  and  a  high  temper; 
and  maybe  she  was  a  scold,  for  it  is  related  that 
she  was  brought  under  church  censure  for  quar- 
reling with  her  neighbors.  At  length  she  was 
accused  of  being  a  "  witch."  She  was  tried  by  a 
jury  and  condemned.  The  verdict,  however,  was 
set  aside,  and  her  case  was  taken  to  the  General 
Court.  Before  that  august  body  she  defended 
herself  ably.  But  the  popular  clamor  was  more 
than  the  court  could  withstand,  and  she  was 
found  guilty.  John  Endicott,  then  governor,  pro- 
nounced the  sentence  of  death  upon  her.     So  on  a 

[  179  1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

day  in  June,  in  the  year  1656,  this  spirited 
woman,  "only  for  having  more  wit  than  her 
neighbors",  as  honest  Parson  Norton  afterward 
said,  was  hanged  on  Boston  Common,  the  second 
and  last  of  the  victims  of  the  witchcraft  delusion 
in  Boston.  We  have  the  site  of  her  home  on 
Devonshire  Street  opposite  the  post-office,  be- 
tween   Milk    Street   and    Spring   Lane. 

Again  on  Washington  Street,  the  site  of  the 
first  tavern,  Cole's  "Ordinary",  as  the  earlier 
inns  were  called,  was  identified.  The  ordinary 
opened  its  inviting  door  nearly  opposite  the  head 
of  Water  Street.  For  a  decade  or  so,  Cole's  was 
the  only  tavern  in  town;  and  its  excellence  was 
attested  by  young  Lord  Ley,  the  nineteen-year- 
old  son  of  Marlborough,  visiting  Boston  and  his 
friend  Harry  Vane  in  the  summer  of  1637,  when, 
declining  Winthrop's  invitation  to  become  the 
guest  of  the  governor's  mansion,  he  declared  that 
the  tavern  was  "so  well  governed"  that  he  could 
be  as  private  there  as  elsewhere.  Vane,  during 
his  brief  reign  as  governor,  utilized  the  inn  for 
official  entertainments.  Some  twenty  years  after 
the  opening  of  Cole's,  Robert  Turner's  "Blue 
Anchor",   more   famous   in   the  Town's   early   his- 

[  180] 


In  the  old  "Bell-in-Hand"  Tavern. 


Old  South  and  King  s  Chapel 

ton",  put  out  its  hospitable  sign  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  way,  about  where  now  we  see  the 
Globe  newspaper  office.  A  savory  dish  for  which 
the  Blue  Anchor  became  renowned  gave  its  first 
name  of  "Pudding"  to  the  lane  —  Devonshire 
Street  —  upon  which  the  tavern  backed.  During 
Landlord  Turner's  day,  the  Blue  Anchor  came  to 
be  the  favorite  place  of  lodging  and  refreshment 
with  out-of-town  members  of  the  General  Court, 
country  clergy  when  summoned  into  synod,  and 
juries.  At  a  later  day,  under  Landlord  Monck, 
its  entertainment  was  commended  by  traveled 
visitors  as  something  quite  after  the  solid  old 
London  sort.  Dunton,  the  gossiping  London 
bookseller,  here  in  16S5,  found  "no  house  in  all 
the  Town  more  noted,  or  where  a  man  might 
meet  with  better  accommodations";  while  the 
landlord  was  "'a  brisk  and  jolly"  fellow  whose 
"conversation  was  coveted  by  all  his  guests", 
animated  as  it  was  with  a  "certain  vivacity  and 
cheerfulness  which  cleared  away  all  melancholy 
as  the  sun  does  clouds,  so  that  it  was  almost  im- 
possible not  to  be  merry  in  his  company.''  Verily 
a  boniface  of  the  good  old  London  pattern,  albeit 
a  Puritan. 

1 1S5 1 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

From  Washington  Street  nearly  opposite  the 
Blue  Anchor  site,  we  plunged  into  the  blind  alley 
of  Williams  Court,  one  of  the  few  surviving  colo- 
nial passages,  from  a  thoroughfare  under  an 
arched  way  through  buildings  making  a  short  cut 
to  a  parallel  street,  and  here  came  upon  the  rem- 
nant of  a  tavern  set  up  a  century  after  Land- 
lord Monck's  day,  in  imitation  of  the  English 
alehouse.  This  is  the  "Bell-in-Hand"  of  fragrant 
memory,  dating  back  to  1795,  and  still  sporting 
alluringly  the  original  sign,  a  hand  swinging  a  bell, 
though  its  career  as  an  inn  closed  years  ago,  and 
it  has  been  retained  as  what  in  England  is  classed 
as  a  pothouse  solely  by  careful  cultivation  of  the 
old  London  aspect.  It  was  originally  the  estab- 
lishment of  one  Wilson,  who  had  long  occupied 
the  useful  office  of  town  crier,  and  who  cleverly 
chose  for  his  tavern  sign  the  symbol  of  his  call- 
ing. 

At  King's  Chapel,  particularly  in  the  interior, 
our  Englishman  remarked  a  striking  resemblance 
to  old  London  churches.  This  was  natural,  for 
its  architect  frankly  modeled  it  largely  after  the 
prevailing  London  type  of  his  time.  He  was 
Peter    Harrison,     a    London    architect,    who    had 

[  184] 


Old  South  and  King  s  Chapel 

come  over  with  Smibert  and  others  in  Dean 
Berkeley's  train,  and  was  established  first  with 
Berkeley  at  Newport,  Rhode  Island.  He  after- 
ward designed  the  Redwood  Library,  erected  in 
1750,  and  other  provincial  buildings  in  Newport. 
His  design  for  the  Chapel  included  a  spire  above 
the  tower,  but  this  had  to  be  cut  out  because  of 
shortness  of  funds.  The  church  was  slowly  built 
for  the  same  reason.  While  the  corner-stone  was 
laid  in  August,  1749,  as  the  legend  above  the 
portal  states,  the  edifice  was  not  completed  and 
ready  for  regular  services  till  August,  1754.  It 
was  built  so  as  to  inclose  the  old  structure,  and 
services  were  held  in  that  one  till  the  spring  of 
1753,  when  it  had  fallen  so  out  of  repair  that  it 
had  to  be  abandoned.  The  parishioners  accepted 
temporarily  the  hospitality  of  Trinity,  the  newest 
of  the  three  Episcopal  churches  in  the  Town  at 
that  time. 

The  old  structure  was  the  Chapel  of  1688,  we 
explained,  but  doubled  in  size  by  an  enlargement 
made  in  17 10,  and,  as  pictured  in  one  of  the  ear- 
liest views  of  Boston,  with  a  tower,  added  at 
that  time,  surmounted  by  a  tall  staff  topped  with 
a  gilt  crown,  symbolizing  the  Chapel's  use  as  the 

[  185  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

official  church,  and  above  this  staff  a  weather- 
cock. With  the  enlargement  of  1710,  the  interior 
was  also  embellished.  There  was  the  grand  gov- 
ernor's pew  raised  on  a  dais  above  the  others  and 
approached  by  steps,  hung  with  crimson  curtains, 
and  surmounted  by  the  royal  crown;  while  near 
by  was  another  handsome  pew  reserved  for  the 
officers  of  the  English  army  and  navy.  On  the 
walls  were  displayed  the  escutcheons  of  the  king 
and  of  the  royal  governor.  The  Chapel  of  1688 
was  a  plain  house  of  wood,  and  its  cost  was  met 
from  subscriptions  by  Andros  and  other  crown 
officers,  and  by  Church  of  England  folk  through- 
out the  Colony.  With  Andros's  overthrow  in 
1689,  it  was  temporarily  closed,  while  RadclifFe, 
the  rector,  and  the  leading  parishioners  were 
clapped  into  jail  —  the  old  prison  on  Prison  Lane 
—  and  retained  there  for  nine  months,  when  they 
were  sent  to  England  by  royal  command.  The 
stone  for  the  present  Chapel  came  from  the  granite 
fields  of  Quincy,  then  Braintree,  and  was  taken 
from  the  surface,  there  then  being  no  quarries. 
The  pillared  portico  was  not  completed  till  after 
the  Revolution,  in  1789. 

The  last  Loyalist  service  in  the  Chapel  before 

[  186] 


King's  Chapel. 


(•f»ty 


Old  South  and  King  s  Chapel 

the  Evacuation  was  on  the  preceding  Sunday. 
About  a  month  later  the  Chapel  was  opened  for 
a  memorial  service  in  honor  of  General  Joseph 
Warren.  Thereafter  it  remained  closed  for  some 
two  years.  Then,  by  a  curious  fate,  it  was  re- 
opened for  use  by  the  Old  South  congregation 
while  their  meeting-house  was  undergoing  repair 
of  the  injuries  it  had  received  during  the  Siege; 
and  they  occupied  it  for  nearly  five  years.  In 
1782  the  remnant  of  the  Chapel's  parishioners 
resumed  regular  services  with  the  Reverend  James 
Freeman  as  rector;  and  in  1787,  under  Mr.  Free- 
man, this  first  Episcopal  church  in  Massachusetts 
became  the  first  Unitarian  church  in  America. 


[  189] 


VIII 
PICTURESQUE  SPOTS 

WE  have  thus  far  gone,  Antiquary  now  re- 
marked, the  rounds  of  what  comprised  the 
little,  early  Town  of  Boston.  As  we  have  found, 
it  really  does  not  extend  from  one  extreme  to  the 
other  more  than  a  morning's  walk,  and  few,  very 
few,  actual  memorials  are  still  to  be  seen.  There 
yet  remain  picturesque  spots  here  and  there, 
which  make  it  possible  to  recall  some  of  the 
agreeable  features  of  a  somewhat  later  age. 

In  byways  off  the  thoroughfares  through 
which  we  have  just  been  passing  are  one  or  two 
of  these  spots  that  escape  the  officially  guided 
tourist's  eye.  Such  is  the  quaint  iron  gateway 
at  the  foot  of  the  short  court  —  Bosworth  Street 
it  is  now  —  opening  from  Tremont  Street  oppo- 
site the  old  Granary  Burying-ground.  We  find 
the  court  ending  at  a  low  stone  barricade,  with 
flights  of  heavy,  rough,  well-worn  stone  steps  in 
the   middle,    leading   down   to   the    gateway;   and 

[  i9i  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

the  gateway  opening  upon  a  narrow  cross  street 
of  a  single  team's  width,  —  Province  Street  of 
to-day,  running  between  School  and  Bromfield 
streets,  the  Governor's  Alley  of  Province  days. 
For  this,  with  Province  Court  opening  from  it 
eastward,  was  originally  the  avenue  to  the  stables 
and  rear  grounds  of  the  Province  House.  The 
gateway  is  not  an  ancient  affair;  it  is  of  early 
nineteenth-century  date,  set  up,  perhaps,  when 
the  court  was  opened,  in  the  eighteen  twenties, 
as  Montgomery  Place,  a  court  of  genteel  dwellings. 
This  court  has  an  added  interest  as  the  dwelling- 
place  of  Doctor  Holmes  for  eighteen  years,  —  from 
1 84 1,  the  year  after  his  marriage,  till  his  removal 
to  Number  164  Charles  Street,  —  where  he  wrote 
the  Autocrat  papers  in  large  part,  and  those  earlier 
poems  which  established  him  in  the  affections  of 
Boston  as  its  best  beloved  local  bard;  and  where 
all  his  children  were  born.  His  was  "that  house 
at  the  left  hand  next  the  further  corner"  yet 
standing,  which  he  describes  in  the  Autocrat  as  the 
Professor's  house.  "When  he  entered  that  door, 
two  shadows  glided  over  the  threshold;  five  lin- 
gered in  the  doorway  when  he  passed  through  it 
for  the  last  time,  —  and  one  of  the  shadows  was 

[  192  ] 


The  Iron  Gate  between  Province  and  Bosworth  Street. 


Picturesque  Spots 

claimed  by  its  owner  to  be  longer  than  his  own." 
This  lengthening  shadow  was  that  of  "My  Cap- 
tain" of  the  Civil  War,  and  Mr.  Justice  Holmes 
of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court  to-day. 

A  spot  of  earlier  date  and  of  different  interest 
is  found  a  little  way  up  town,  on  Washington 
Street,  opposite  Boylston  Street  and  near  the  cor- 
ner of  Essex.  If  we  look  sharp,  we  shall  see  on  a 
tablet  affixed  to  the  face  of  a  building  here  a  rude 
picture  of  a  tree.  This  marks  the  site  of  the 
"Liberty  Tree",  a  broad-spreading  elm,  beneath 
which  was  "Liberty  Hall",  the  popular  gathering 
place  of  the  "Sons  of  Liberty"  in  the  Revolution- 
ary days.  Naturally,  at  the  Siege  the  British 
soldiers  chopped  it  down. 

Our  final  ramble  is  over  the  Old  West  End: 
the  first  West  End,  lying  north  and  west  of  the 
slopes  of  Beacon  Hill  between  the  foot  of  Scollay 
Square  at  Sudbury  Street  and  the  River  Charles. 
Originally  its  north  bound  was  the  North  Cove,  or 
Mill  Pond,  the  water  reaching  Leverett  Street  at 
one  point  and  cutting  up  toward  the  foot  of  Tem- 
ple Street  at  Cambridge  Street,  while  high-water 
mark  crossed  Cambridge  Street  at  its  junction 
with  Anderson  Street  coming  down  the  hill.     This 

[  i9Sl 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

was  the  cove,  we  recalled,  that  the  earth  from  the 
cutting  of  Beacon  Hill  top  in  1811-1823  went  to 
fill.  It  is  an  untidy  quarter  now,  this  Old  West 
End,  and  in  parts  sordid.  The  pleasant  old 
streets,  and  Bowdoin  Square,  its  once  fair  central 
feature,  with  their  refined  homes  of  respectability 
and  imposing  mansion-houses  set  in  fine  gardens, 
are  now  sadly  blemished  with  ill-favored  struc- 
tures replacing  the  handsome  dwellings,  while 
pretty  much  all  of  the  quarter  is  deplorably 
shabby.  Yet  here  and  there  we  come  upon  pic- 
turesque spots  and  a  landmark  or  two  of  value. 

Most  refreshing  was  the  sight  of  the  old  West 
Meeting-house  setting  back  from  and  above  Cam- 
bridge Street,  now  preserved  and  protected  by  its 
use  as  the  West  End  Branch  of  the  Boston  Public 
Library.  In  this  we  have  an  admirable  example 
of  a  favored  type  of  brick  meeting-house  at  the 
opening  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  dates  from 
1806,  as  one  of  the  tablets  on  its  face  records, 
and  replaces  the  first  West  Church,  a  house  of 
wood,  erected  in  1737.  The  first  West  Church 
was  the  meeting-house  which  was  used  as  a  bar- 
rack during  the  Siege,  and  the  steeple  of  which 
was  taken  down  because  it  had  been  used  by  the 

[  196] 


A  Bit  of  old  Leverett  Street. 


Picturesque  Spots 


cc 


rebels"  for  signaling  the  American  Camp  at 
Cambridge,  just  before  the  Siege.  It  was  demol- 
ished to  make  way  for  the  present  structure  which 
occupies  its  site.  In  its  history  of  nearly  one 
hundred  and  seventy  years  as  a  place  of  worship, 
the  West  Church  was  the  pulpit  of  but  five  pas- 
tors in  succession;  and  the  services  of  two  of  the 
five  covered  the  whole  period  of  the  present  meet- 
ing-house. These  were  Charles  Lowell,  father  of 
James  Russell  Lowell,  who  served  from  1806  till 
his  death  in  1 861,  fifty-five  years,  and  Cyrus  A. 
Bartol,  first  from  1837  to  1861  as  Doctor  Lowell's 
colleague,  and  afterward  as  sole  pastor  till  his 
death  in  1901,  a  service  in  all  of  sixty-five  years. 
The  second  of  the  five,  the  Reverend  Jonathan 
Mayhew,  1 747-1 766,  has  been  claimed  not  only 
as  a  fearless  early  Revolutionary  patriot,  but  also 
as  the  first  preacher  of  Unitarianism  in  Boston 
pulpits,  and,  too,  by  the  Universalists  as  the  first 
Boston  preacher  of  their  faith.  It  was  gratifying 
to  find  the  old  entrance  square,  or  park,  well 
cared  for;  and  the  oaks  that  Doctor  Lowell  had 
transplanted  here  from  the  grounds  of  his  Cam- 
bridge "Elmwood"  where  they  had  been  raised 
from  acorns,  our  guest  was  told.    And  the  colonial 

[  199  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

brick  and  iron  fence  enclosing  the  square,  with 
the  handsome  gate  and  the  old-fashioned  swinging 
sign  above  it,  added  the  pleasing  finishing  touches 
to  this  attractive  spot  in  a  depressingly  unattract- 
ive neighborhood. 

Lynde  Street,  at  the  side  of  the  church  and 
running  over  a  knoll  to  Green  Street,  is  one  of  the 
older  streets  of  the  quarter  and  was  new  and  of 
the  highest  respectability  when  the  first  West 
Church  was  built,  which  faced  it.  The  street  was 
cut  through  "Lynde's  Pasture"  and  was  named 
for  the  Lynde  family,  which,  beginning  with  Simon 
Lynde,  a  colonial  Boston  merchant  and  large 
owner  of  Boston  realty,  rose  to  larger  distinction 
through  Simon's  son  and  grandson,  Benjamin  and 
Benjamin,  2d,  both  of  whom  became  chief  justices 
of  the  Province.  The  latter  presided  at  the  trial 
of  Captain  Preston,  after  the  "Boston  Massacre" 
of  1770,  when  Preston  was  defended  by  the  patriot 
leaders,  John  Adams  and  Josiah  Quincy.  Lever- 
ett  Street,  practically  a  continuation  of  Lynde 
Street  across  Green  Street,  is  of  about  the  same 
age  and  was  of  similar  high  character  in  its  prime, 
albeit  after  the  opening  of  eighteen  hundred  the 
almshouse  and  the  jail  were  established  here.     It 

[  200  ] 


The  Quaint  Corner  where  Poplar  and  Chambers  Streets 
meet. 


I 


m 


M 


■ 


Picturesque  Spots 

was  named  for  Governor  Leverett,  who  was  a 
large  landowner  in  these  parts.  To-day  we  find 
it  eminently  a  foreign  quarter,  with  Russian  Jews 
largely  herded  here,  the  cheerful  old  houses  trans- 
formed into  or  supplanted  by  dismal  tenements 
and  bedaubed  shops.  Yet  in  this  unkempt  thor- 
oughfare the  Artist  pointed  out  more  than  one 
picturesque  spot  and  made  a  sketch  of  a  bit  of 
the  street.  Once  there  were  quiet  little  residen- 
tial courts  off  the  street,  and  there  yet  remain  a 
foot  passage  or  two  between  thoroughfares. 

Through  one  of  these  —  Hammond  Avenue  it  is 
now  loftily  designated,  though  not  wide  enough  for 
three  to  walk  abreast  —  we  press  to  the  thorough- 
fare of  Chambers  Street,  parallel  with  Leverett. 
Here  again  we  are  in  a  once  choice  neighborhood 
fallen  upon  sorry  days,  yet  retaining  pictur- 
esqueness  in  parts,  and  remnants  of  past  glory. 
These  remnants  are  mostly  to  be  seen  in  the  old 
streets  running  southward  from  Chambers,  — 
Poplar,  Allen,  McLean.  Of  one  quaint  corner, 
where  Chambers  and  Poplar  streets  meet,  the 
Artist  makes  a  sketch  for  us.  Another  picturesque 
corner  we  note  is  where  Chambers  and  McLean 
meet,  opposite  the  church  —  an  old-time  Unitarian 

[  203  ] 


Rambles  Around  Old  Boston 

meeting-house  turned  Roman  Catholic.  Taking 
McLean  Street,  we  have  a  pleasing  approach  to 
the  great  domain  of  the  old  Massachusetts  Gen- 
eral Hospital  with  a  part  of  the  main  building  of 
Bulfinch's  design  appearing  before  us  at  the  end  of 
the  vista.  This  hospital,  the  Englishman  was 
aware,  is  especially  distinguished  as  the  institu- 
tion in  which  the  first  extensive  surgical  operation 
on  a  patient  under  the  influence  of  ether  was  suc- 
cessfully performed.  That  was  in  October,  1856, 
and  our  guest  might  see  hanging  in  the  main 
building  a  picture  commemorating  the  event,  with 
portraits  of  the  surgeons  and  physicians  present 
on  the  great  occasion;  while  in  the  Public  Garden 
is  J.  Q.  A.  Ward's  commemorative  monument. 
Founded  in  1799,  incorporated  in  181 1,  and  opened 
to  patients  in  1821,  we  remarked  that  this  hos- 
pital was  the  second  to  be  established  in  the  coun- 
try, the  Pennsylvania  Hospital  having  been  the 
first.  While  numerous  other  great  modern  hospi- 
tals, some  more  splendidly  endowed,  have  since 
been  erected  in  Boston,  we  were  confident  that  we 
were  but  echoing  the  best  opinion  when  we  as- 
sured our  guest  that  it  continues  one  of  the  most 
complete  and  perfectly  organized  institutions  of  its 

[  204  ] 


Picturesque  Spots 

class.  It  is  a  little  city,  now,  of  fine  buildings 
finely  equipped,  yet  the  Bulfinch  granite  structure, 
the  central  part  of  the  first  main  building,  re- 
mains the  most  picturesque. 

At  this  spot,  dedicated  to  the  alleviation  of  hu- 
man suffering,  the  Artist  and  Antiquary  found  a 
suitable  occasion  for  telling  their  intelligent  guest, 
the  Englishman,  that  the  complete  separation  be- 
tween the  Past  and  Present  was  well  expressed 
in  the  surrounding  neighborhood.  Where  once 
stood  the  comfortable  houses  of  prosperous  Bos- 
ton, now  on  every  hand  are  the  homes,  humble 
indeed  but  still  homes,  of  many  races,  secure 
in  the  liberties  that  his  kin  beyond  the  seas  had 
nobly  won. 

As  we  parted,  the  Englishman,  not  without 
emotion,  admitted  that  he  had  seen  and  heard 
many  things  to  confirm  a  belief  with  which  he 
had  begun  our  little  tours,  that  the  greatness 
of  his  race  was  still  as  well  carried  forward  in 
this  early  home  of  sedition  and  rebellion  as  in 
the  Mother  Isle  itself. 


[  205  ] 


The  Boston  Stone. 


DATE  DUE 

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MAR   2  B 

APR  ?7 

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UNIVERSITY  PRODUCTS,  INC.    #859-5503 

BOSTON  COLLEGE 


3   9031    025  83115   7 


